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What’s Inside Staying alive Cell death Prestige Research Views Responding to the reader Cellular construction Stroke: brain attack Research outside the lab The road to commercialization 2005-2006 Lionel McLeod Scholarship winner AHFMR announces $48 million for health research Reader Resources Staying alive Viruses and the immune system How do viruses turn off the body’s early-warning immune system? This is the key question for AHFMR Senior Scholar Dr. Michele Barry, and the answers and their implications are surprisingly complex. “The body is able to ward off infections quite effectively by means of the innate immune system—the body’s first line of defence when it comes to fighting off foreign invaders,” explains Dr. Barry. “Innate immunity recognizes non-specific foreign bodies and attacks them. Basically, it keeps breaches at bay until the body can determine what it’s dealing with and mount the appropriate full-scale immune attack against it.” This full-scale counterattack involves the adaptive or acquired immune system, which provides long-lasting, specific protection, but which takes longer to swing into action. If the innate immune system doesn’t work properly, there can be dire consequences. Many viruses have developed the ability to escape detection by the innate immune system, allowing them to replicate and infect their host unchecked. “The nature of my research is two-fold,” says Dr. Barry. “I want to understand how viruses evade immune detection and, based on this, dissect the antiviral pathways used by the immune system. Usually, when a cell becomes infected, it sends out big red flags that signal to the body’s immune system: ‘I’m infected!’ The innate immune system then seeks out the infected cell and sends signals that cause it to die. This form of cell death is known as apoptosis.” Cell death The many pathways and proteins within the cell that turn on and shut off apoptosis make the process challenging to study. Although the infected cell may receive a signal from the innate immune system telling it to die, the virus may have the ability to produce proteins that block this signal. Dr. Barry’s team has discovered a protein known as F1L, made by the poxvirus vaccinia. F1L works to shut off the apoptotic pathway at a pivotal point, so that the host cell containing the virus does not die as it should. This allows the virus to continue replicating and infecting other cells in the body. Understanding how viruses work could be the key to improving treatment. Dr. Barry’s research could also help us understand more about cancer, since apoptosis is often turned off or down-regulated in cancerous cells. Prestige The University of Alberta and AHFMR are not the only organizations to recognize the potential impact of her work. In 2004, Dr. Barry was one of five Canadians who received a prestigious Howard Hughes International Research Scholar award. Not only is the award a huge honour; it will also help fund Dr. Barry’s research for the next five years. “I am thrilled about the recognition, and I know the support system that surrounds me here at the University of Alberta is a key contributor to my laboratory’s success,” says Dr. Barry. AHFMR Senior Scholar Dr. Michele Barry is an associate professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Alberta, and a Howard Hughes International Research Scholar in Infectious Diseases. Dr. Barry’s work is also supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). She is the recipient of a Boehringer Ingelheim Young Investigator Award. Selected publications Stewart TL, Wasilenko ST, Barry M. Vaccinia virus F1L protein is a tail-anchored protein that functions at the mitochondria to inhibit apoptosis. Journal of Virology 2005 Jan;79(2):1084-1098. Wasilenko ST, Stewart TL, Meyers AFA, Barry M. Vaccinia virus encodes a previously uncharacterized mitochondrial-associated inhibitor of apoptosis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 2003 Nov 25;100(24):14345-14350. Back to Top