Dr Joanne McKenzie

Joanne joined the Singanayagam group as a Research Associate in June 2024. Her current research aims are to investigate the role of respiratory virus in exacerbation of bronchiectasis. This work will use the first human challenge model of this type where volunteers with bronchiectasis will be inoculated with rhinovirus to establish causation between viral infection and exacerbation. Joanne will further explore if anti-viral immunity is impaired in bronchiectasis by isolating immune and airway epithelial cells (nasal and bronchial) then stimulating ex vivo with respiratory virus/agonists to interrogate mechanistic responses.

This work builds on Joanne’s own personal research interests in understanding host-viral interactions at the airway epithelial barrier and human challenge models of respiratory disease. Her interest in respiratory pathogens started during her Microbiology undergraduate degree at the University of Glasgow where she graduated in 2017. She then completed her MSc in Molecular Medicine at the University of Sheffield in 2018 where she undertook a research project investigating the role of airway epithelial cell membrane microdomain interactions during infection with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). She was then awarded a scholarship by the research faculty to continue this work as a PhD student which she completed in 2022. Joanne then joined Imperial as a postdoctoral researcher where she worked across a range of human challenge models used to investigate pathogenesis and protective immunity to human respiratory viral infection with RSV, SARS-CoV-2, and influenza, helping establish the isolation and growth of airway epithelial cells from older participants to interrogate age-related immune responses to RSV infection.