2019 Blavatnik Innovation: Developing Phages as Evolution-Proof Therapies Against Drug-Resistant Bacteria

2018 Blavatnik Innovation: Phage therapy increases effectiveness of antibiotics for treating multi-drug resistant bacterial infections. (Development Grant winner)

The Turner group is interested in examining how viruses evolutionarily adapt to overcome new challenges, such as emergence on novel host species, transmission via new arthropod vectors, survival at elevated temperatures, or changes in host immunity. Their work also examines how viruses can be used in phage therapy as an alternative to traditional antibiotics, and in oncolytic therapy against cancers. They employ a wide variety of study systems, including bacteria-bacteriophage studies, and tissue culture experiments using molecular virology models such as vesicular stomatitis virus and Sindbis virus, and disease pathogens such as dengue virus.