News

Read the latest news and updates from The Pirbright Institute.

Go to main content

Filters

Filters

Enter keywords

Select virus

Select month

Select researcher

Featured news

Pirbight's Plowright building from afar with wild plants in front

15 November 2024

Pirbright welcomes two successful Doctoral Landscape Awards in life and environmental sciences

The Pirbright Institute is celebrating two major doctoral training initiatives funded by the UKRI Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), each offering unique opportunities for the next generation of scientists. These programmes…

Close up of a pipette tip in a well of gel electrophoresis. Blue liquid is visible in the wells.

14 November 2024

Nurturing emerging leaders in science

Two talented Pirbright researchers have been awarded with Strategic Career Development Awards (SCDAs) to advance their research and career trajectories. Dr Rory Fortes de Brito, a Senior Postdoctoral researcher in the Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) Immunology group and Dr Lidia…

Latest news

Pink piglet standing on gravel

Pirbright scientists investigate pig coronavirus infection to understand COVID-19 in humans

Researchers at Pirbright have developed a pig respiratory coronavirus (PRCV) model which will help to understand how coronaviruses cause disease and how the immune system responds to them. Human coronaviruses such as Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS…

A pig in hay with straw over face

22 January 2021

Early animal studies by Pirbright and Oxford yield promising results for new potential COVID-19 vaccine

Studies carried out by The Pirbright Institute and the University of Oxford have shown that Oxford’s new potential vaccine against COVID-19, named RBD-SpyVLP, produces a strong antibody response in mice and pigs, providing vital information for the further development of the vaccine. Although this…

Herd of cows in the field in Tanzania

Pirbright develops universal foot-and-mouth disease virus test

A diagnostic test that can detect whether an animal has been infected by or vaccinated against any type of foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) has been developed by scientists at The Pirbright Institute and Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale della Lombardia e dell'Emilia Romagna (IZSLER). The…

white mouse in tube with red eyes

26 September 2018

Engineering ‘Fab’ new ways of reducing animal use in foot-and-mouth disease diagnostics

A novel foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) diagnostic reagent has been developed by scientists at The Pirbright Institute. This has the potential to be used in FMD diagnostic tests, and will be significantly quicker to produce when compared to existing test reagents due to a simplified production…

cold virus

Breakthrough could make the common cold not so common

Researchers at The Pirbright Institute have helped in the development of a new molecule to treat a range of viruses including the common cold. In addition to the days of work lost due to illness, the common cold can cause complications in respiratory illnesses such as asthma and cystic fibrosis. The…

foot-and-mouth disease infected cell

27 February 2018

Foot-and-mouth disease protein could be used for disease detection

Dr Stephen Berryman and Dr Toby Tuthill from The Pirbright Institute have collaborated with the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and other research institutes* to uncover a new system used by the foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) to prevent antiviral signalling of infected cells. The discovery…

Foot-and-mouth disease virus capsid structure

12 December 2017

Protein shown vital for foot-and-mouth disease virus replication

Researchers at The Pirbright Institute have shown that when drugs are used to inhibit the cellular protein, hsp90, foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) production is reduced. Hsp90 is a protein used by cells to fold other proteins correctly and it was shown to be required by FMDV to form the outer…