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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…

12 August 2024

New efficient method developed to tackle avian infectious bronchitis virus

Pirbright researchers, in collaboration with New England Biolabs, Inc., have developed an innovative approach to study infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), a highly infectious poultry pathogen. The new method, published in PLoS ONE, will allow quicker response to IBV, particularly in vaccine…

24 August 2022

A novel way to create vaccines against infectious bronchitis virus explored by Pirbright scientists

Researchers at The Pirbright Institute have developed a potential vaccine for infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) that could protect chickens from severe disease with just one dose. IBV is a coronavirus that causes a highly contagious disease in poultry, it results in respiratory symptoms and affects…

11 April 2022

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…

Flock of brown and white chickens following a person in boots

10 March 2022

Pirbright develops new ways to create safe vaccines to protect poultry from infectious bronchitis virus

Researchers from The Pirbright Institute working to improve vaccines for infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) have identified targets in the virus’s genetic code that could make vaccines safer. Better vaccines would have a huge impact on improving health and welfare of poultry and protect food security…

Coronavirus particle (red) infecting a human cell (blue)

22 September 2021

Pirbright contributes to new global coronavirus research and innovation network

The UK International Coronavirus Network (UK-ICN) is a new global network of researchers from both animal and human coronavirus communities. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown what a huge impact a zoonotic disease can have globally. With the current death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic at over 4.7…

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…

graphic representation of the coronavirus

08 January 2021

Pirbright study shows how SARS-CoV-2 could have adapted from bats to humans and which other animals it could infect

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 ( SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19, is thought to have originated in bats, but how it jumped hosts to infect humans is unclear, as is the potential for the virus to infect other animal species. Researchers from The Pirbright Institute have…

IBV strain M41-CK (red) growing in Vero cells (green with blue nuclei) in the presence of trypsin

13 November 2020

Pirbright reveals new method to study poultry virus (IBV) which could reduce the need to use birds in research

An enzyme called trypsin boosts the growth of infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) strains in lab cell cultures, scientists at The Pirbright Institute have shown. This finding could enable researchers to study strains of the poultry virus that were previously inaccessible and potentially provide…

Beaudette infection in primary chicken kidney cell cultures. They have been labelled anti-E (red) and anti-IBV (green) and the nuclei are labelled blue with DAPI.

01 September 2020

Increasing infectious bronchitis virus vaccine heat resilience could improve performance, Pirbright scientists reveal

Two recent studies from The Pirbright Institute and the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute show that two vaccines against specific strains of infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) do not offer complete protection against a third strain, and that this may be partly down to the temperature range…

M41 infection in primary chicken kidney cell cultures. They have been labelled anti-E (red) and anti-IBV (green) and the nuclei are labelled blue with DAPI.

04 August 2020

Pirbright scientists identify new genes in infectious bronchitis virus

Two new genes have been identified in infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), a coronavirus that causes an acute, highly contagious and economically important respiratory disease of poultry. The research, carried out by scientists at The Pirbright Institute, raises the prospect that coronavirus genomes…

23 June 2020

Studies at Pirbright demonstrate two doses of Oxford University’s COVID-19 vaccine boosts immune response in pigs

The Pirbright Institute, working in collaboration with the University of Oxford, have successfully shown that two doses of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AZD1222) vaccine produce a greater antibody response than a single dose in pigs. The emergence and subsequent spread of SARS-CoV-2 has caused a global…

Merged cells following co-expression of the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein and human ACE2 receptors.

19 June 2020

SARS-CoV-2 has the potential to enter animal cells

Scientists at The Pirbright Institute have shown that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), responsible for coronavirus disease (COVID-19), is able to enter cells using the receptors of multiple mammalian species. The broad host range of SARS-CoV-2 confirms the potential risk…

Featured news

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

Nurturing emerging leaders in science

Latest news

New efficient method developed to tackle avian infectious bronchitis virus

A novel way to create vaccines against infectious bronchitis virus explored by Pirbright scientists

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

Pirbright develops new ways to create safe vaccines to protect poultry from infectious bronchitis virus

Pirbright contributes to new global coronavirus research and innovation network

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

Pirbright study shows how SARS-CoV-2 could have adapted from bats to humans and which other animals it could infect

Pirbright reveals new method to study poultry virus (IBV) which could reduce the need to use birds in research

Increasing infectious bronchitis virus vaccine heat resilience could improve performance, Pirbright scientists reveal

Pirbright scientists identify new genes in infectious bronchitis virus

Studies at Pirbright demonstrate two doses of Oxford University’s COVID-19 vaccine boosts immune response in pigs

SARS-CoV-2 has the potential to enter animal cells