Rupert Beale is a clinician scientist group leader at the Francis Crick Institute.
We have seen plenty of viral variants, some with Spike genes of sufficient interest to merit a Greek letter. Spike is the virus’s entry weapon, and the bit of the virus that’s targeted by vaccines. If your antibodies block Spike, you block the virus – and if Spike has mutated, it may have become better at dodging those antibodies. Delta has been the most vicious variant so...
For their work on understanding and using the chemical modifications of RNA to make better vaccines, Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman have been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine – the only surprise being that they didn’t get it last year. Your share of the prize has probably been deposited into your deltoid muscle, if at some point you got the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna Covid vaccine.
John Lanchester and Rupert Beale talk to Tom about the spread of the latest variant, where we might stand in the story of Covid, and the failures of the state in coping with the pandemic.
Catherine Moore, a consultant clinical virologist at Public Health Wales, and Rupert Beale, a clinician scientist group leader at the Francis Crick Institute, talk to Thomas Jones about the vaccine rollout...
Rupert Beale talks to Thomas Jones about the new Sars-CoV-2 vaccines, how the mRNA technology works, why social distancing still matters, and why he’s worried about Christmas. (The conversation was recorded...
Rupert Beale talks to Thomas Jones about Covid-19 vaccine candidates, and reasons not to rush them; how worried we should be about reported cases of re-infection; possible reasons for the apparent drop...
Sonia Gandhi and Rupert Beale, scientists at the Francis Crick Institute, talk to Thomas Jones about the ways Covid-19 can affect the nervous system, the steps required to reopen the NHS after lockdown,...
Rupert Beale talks again to Thomas Jones about his work at the Francis Crick Institute, where he's helping to develop a testing lab for Covid-19. He talks about the challenges of creating a scalable testing...
Following his piece for the LRB about Covid-19, Rupert Beale talks to Thomas Jones about what the novel coronavirus is, how well countries are dealing with it, and what hopes there are for stopping the...
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