Lucy Mosscrop is a final year PhD student in the group of Professor John Tregoning at Imperial College London, co-supervised by Professor Maria Zambon (UK Health Security Agency/UKHSA) and Professor Peter Openshaw (NHLI, Imperial College London). Her work is supported by the Health Protection Research Unit in Respiratory Infections in collaboration with UKHSA.
Lucy’s research focus is on respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) specifically the fusion or F protein and how it has evolved and may continue to evolve as new interventions are implemented. As part of this work, she has collaborated extensively with UKHSA to help set up an improved RSV whole-genome sequencing assay (WGS) which has since been used to sequence over 1000 RSV-positive clinical samples from the UK (data available on GISAID). She is using this surveillance data to screen for potential RSV monoclonal antibody resistance mutations and test the biological consequences of these changes via reverse genetics systems. Ultimately hoping to establish a pipeline of surveillance, phenotyping and continuous monitoring.
