We are extremely proud of all our colleagues who are contributing to the COVID-19 emergency response. We want to celebrate them by highlighting their contributions over the next few weeks in this mini-series of ‘LMS Emergency Response to COVID-19’. Today we want to introduce you to post-doc; Ludovica Bruno.

What is your current role within the COVID-19 response?

I have been helping Prof. Graham Taylor’s group at St. Mary’s Hospital with the reagents required for testing for COVID-19. His lab set up a kit-free protocol for COVID-19 RNA extraction, and needed all the reagents for it and to run the test on their machines. All the labs at the Institute very kindly donated some reagents. Testing is the way forward! Not only for people who have symptoms and therefore are tested (and I am talking of viral test, rqPCR), but also people going back to work in this crucial phase should be tested regularly.

What is your research at the LMS about?

My research at LMS is on the regulation of the Runx transcription factors family members. In particular, we are exploring the gene regulatory mechanisms that control the gene expression of specific Runx paralogs in the immune system.