The MRC PPU recently welcomed the Director, Dr Sally Burtles, and Chair, Sir John Iredale, of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine to the University of Dundee for Kirby’s Lister Prize award ceremony. Before being awarded the Lister Prize, Kirby delivered a seminar to the School of Life Sciences titled “Insights into the ISG15 system – a multi-functional ubiquitin-like protein with critical roles in immunity”, where he discussed his current and future research programme and how the Lister Prize is enabling him to establish a new line of research.

Kirby plans to use the Lister Prize to investigate how some pathogens evade the host immune response by ‘inactivating’ ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like signals. These modifications have many important roles in innate immune signalling and antiviral defence. Consequently, many pathogens have evolved sophisticated mechanisms to interfere with these host defence response pathways, including the inactivation of ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like proteins.

To read more about this event, please see Kirby’s recent interview with the Lister Institute (Feb 2025): https://lister-institute.org.uk/a-prize-visit-to-kirby-swatek-at-the-university-of-dundee/