Alagie Jassey

Postdoctoral Fellow

BSc: Kaohsiung Medical University
MSc: Taipei Medical University
PhD: Taipei Medical University

Alagie has previously worked as a medical laboratory technician in the serology laboratory at the Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital, Gambia, where he screens for infectious/contagious diseases such as the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Measles and Rubella, Yellow Fever, and Syphilis. During his master's and Ph.D. programs in Taiwan, he was interested in understanding virus-host interaction to identify host factors that could enhance or restrict viral replication. Specifically, his goal was to unveil how the Hepatitis C Virus, a leading cause of liver cancer, against which no protective vaccine currently exists, subverts the cellular autophagy pathway to aid its reproduction. As a post-doc in the Jackson laboratory, his current project, amongst others, is to uncover how picornaviruses, including EV-D68, A71, and others, commandeer autophagy (both specific and non-specific) to facilitate its replication. Understanding how picornaviruses subvert autophagy could help in identifying targets for therapeutic interventions against these emerging infectious agents.