John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK
Dr Hadrien Peyret is a Postdoctoral Scientist in the Lomonosoff Lab at the John Innes Centre.
His research is focused on the production of Virus-Like Particles in plants. Specifically, his project aims to develop a new way of producing vaccines. This new technique uses plants as the expression system, and the core capsid of the Hepatitis B Virus as an antigen carrier. This technique combines genetic elements from numerous viruses, bacteria, and even mammals to create an ideal scaffold onto which proteins of interest, such as antigens, can be attached.
A huge advantage of this technique is that it does not require the target pathogen to be produced in an infectious form, meaning the production process is very safe, and the final product would have no risk of causing an infection. The project brings together numerous techniques from molecular biology, microbiology, plant biotechnology, and biochemistry.