Dr George William Carnell

Biography

I read Biology with Microbiology at Imperial College, then went on to take the Medical Microbiology (Virology) MSc at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine under the supervision of Prof. Nick Dorrell, Prof. John Kelly and Dr. Nick Johnson (APHA).

I went on to the Viral Pseudotype Unit at the University of Kent for my PhD, under the supervision of Prof. Nigel Temperton and Dr. Simon Scott, through a collaboration with Prof. Sarah Gilbert (Jenner inst. Oxford). Work surrounded the production and use of influenza glycoprotein bearing lentiviral pseudotypes. This involved various subtypes and strains of this virus, and in particular, the production of a chimeric haemagglutinin used for the detection of stalk-directed and neutralising antibodies - one of many goals for current 'universal' influenza vaccines.

My current work within the LVZ, headed by Prof. Jonathan Heeney, involves pre-clinical vaccine studies, immunological assays and virology towards the development of a pan-betacoronavirus vaccine, funded by CEPI.

Research

My interests lie in the development of vaccine platforms in pre-clinical models to advance research in viral vaccinology to emerging and re-emerging viruses. My primary targets are respiratory viruses such as influenza virus and the human coronaviruses, also spilling over to animal reservoirs of pandemic-potential viruses. I am also interested in the exploitation of viruses to build tools in vaccinology that can progress our research, whether through safer or more controllable models of infection, or targeted methods of vaccination using viral glycoproteins. Vaccine development for largely unstudied viruses presents a challenge in that many of the tools to evaluate antibody responses do not exist. I am heavily invested in the development of immunogenicity assays to evaluate immune responses to poorly studied viruses such as the diverse coronaviruses found in bats and other mammals.

Publications

Key publications:

Google Scholar:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=fVYTr94AAAAJ&hl=en

Scherer, K. M., Mascheroni, L., Carnell, G. W., Wunderlick, C. S., Makarchuk, S., Brockhoff, M., Mela, I., Fernandez-Villegas, A., Barysevich, M., Stewart, H., Suau Sans, M., George, CL., Lamb, J. R., Kaminski-Schierle, G. S., Heeney, J. L., Kaminski, C. F. (2022). SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein adheres to replication organelles before viral assembly at the Golgi/ERGIC and lysosome-mediated egress. Science Advances. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abl4895

Sampson, A. T., Heeney, J., Cantoni, D., Ferrari, M., Suau Sans, M., George, C., Di Genova, C., Mayora Neto, M., Einhauser, S., Asbach, B., Wagner, R., Baxendale, H., Temperton, N., Carnell, G. W. (2021). Coronavirus Pseudotypes for All Circulating Human Coronaviruses for Quantification of Cross-Neutralizing Antibody Responses. Viruses. doi.org/10.3390/v13081579

Carnell, G. W., Ciazynska, K, A., Wells, D. A., Xiong, X., Aguinam, E. T., McLaughlin, S. H., Mallery, D., Ebrahimi, S., Ceron-Gutierrez, L., Asbach, B., Einhauser, S., Wagner, R., James, L. J., Doffinger, R., Heeney, J. L., Briggs, J. A. G. (2021). SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Stabilized in the Closed State Induces Potent Neutralizing Responses. Journal of Virology. doi.org/10.1128/JVI.00203-21

Favara, D. M., Ceron-Gutierrez, M, L., Carnell, G. W., Heeney, J. L., Corrie, P., Doffinger, R. (2020).Detection of breastmilk antibodies targeting SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid, spike and receptor-binding-domain antigens. Emerging Microbes & Infections. doi.org/10.1080/22221751.2020.1858699

Giotis, E. S., Carnell, G. W., Young, E. F., Ghanny, S., Soteropoulos, P., Barclay, W. S., Skinner, M. A., Temperton, N. J. (2019). Entry of the bat influenza H17N10 virus into mammalian cells is enabled by the MHC class II HLA-DR receptor. Nature Microbiology. doi.org/10.1038/s41564-019-0517-3

Carnell, G. W., Giotis, E. S., Grehan, K., Ferrara, F., Mather, S., Molesti, E., Scott, S., Pessi, A., Lacek, K., Temperton, N, J. (2018).The bat influenza H17N10 can be neutralised by broadly-neutralising monoclonal antibodies and its neuraminidase facilitates viral egress. bioRxiv. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/499947

Thompson, C. P., Lourenco, J., Walters, A. A., Obolski, U., Edmans, M., Palmer, S. D., Kooblall, K., Carnell, G. W., Connor, D. O., Bowden, T. A., Pybus, O. G., Pollard, A. J., Temperton, N. J., Lambe, T., Gilbert, S. G., Gupta, S. (2018). A naturally protective epitope of limited variability as an influenza vaccine target. Nature Communications. 2018;9(1):3859. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-06228-8

Valkenburg, S. A., Mallajosyula, V. V. A., Li, O. T. W., Chin, A. W. H., Carnell, G. W., Temperton, N. J., Varadarajan, R., Poon, L. L. M. (2016). Stalking influenza by vaccination with pre-fusion headless HA mini-stem. Scientific Reports. 6: 1-11. doi: 10.1038/srep22666.

Carnell, G. W., Ferrara, F., Grehan, K., Thompson, C. P., Temperton, N. J. (2015). Pseudotype-based neutralization assays for influenza: A systematic analysis. Frontiers in Immunology. 6(MAR): 1- 17. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2015.00161.