Skin viral infections
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Viral infections of human skin tissue
IRAS ID
340166
Contact name
Judith Breuer
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
ICH, University College London (UCL)
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
The viruses which cause chickenpox (VZV), the common cold sore (HSV) and even the recent monkeypox outbreak that affected over 80,000 people in less than 8 months, although different from one another, are all able to infect the highly specialised cells the make up our skin. Our preliminary data suggest that these viruses may use similar mechanisms to infect skin and cause disease. This research study will be focused on identifying these similar mechanisms and test how different chemicals can disrupt them. In this study we therefore plan to culture in vitro human skin tissue explants from surgical surplus skin tissues for infection with viruses including VZV, HSV-1, HSV-2, VACV, cowpox virus (both VACV and cowpox viruses will be used as surrogates for monkeypox), followed by transcriptional and protein expression analyses of both host skin tissue and viruses.
REC name
South West - Cornwall & Plymouth Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/SW/0096
Date of REC Opinion
1 Aug 2024
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion