00:00 Exteriors
of King’s College London, Guy’s Campus
Archbishop
Tutu enters new laboratories
Professor
Adrian Hayday with Wellcome Trust members
Archbishop
Tutu touring new laboratory facilities
Archbishop
Tutu unveils plaque
c.u.
Commemorative Plaque
Applause
Guide Voice: Today, on the Guy’s Campus
of King’s College London, Archbishop Desmond Tutu opened new
laboratories for one of the UK’s leading research centres for
infectious disease and immunology. Archbishop Tutu, an alumnus of
King’s College London and currently at the University as a
Visiting Professor, is a particularly appropriate choice to open
this new facility. He’s spoken in the past about the impact
of infectious diseases in his native South Africa and will give the
keynote speech to ministers of the European Union on the HIV crisis
at a conference in Dublin this weekend.
00:38 SOT: Archbishop Desmond Tutu (in response
to question asking what he thought of the facilities) -
“I’m so thankful that people are going to be able
to work to try to deal with this horrendous, horrendous pandemic
and, maybe, we’ll be able to find a cure for HIV/Aids
especially. But this is quite extraordinarily
beautiful.”
01:00 Staff
and students listening to Archbishop Tutu
Archbishop
Tutu speaking
Guide Voice: Following the unveiling of a
plaque he addressed staff and students of King’s College
London.
01:33 Laboratory
sign
Researchers
in Laboratory (handling samples in liquid nitrogen) - various
shots
Guide Voice: The £7 million pound
refurbishment of the Infection and Immunity Laboratories will
provide cutting edge technology for researchers seeking new
solutions to some of the World’s worst infectious
diseases.
01:45 SOT: Professor Michael Malim, Head of Infectious
Diseases at King’s College London -
“This is the culmination of a plan initiated by
King’s over seven years ago, starting with the recruitment of
Adrian Hayday from Yale and myself, I came here two and a half
years ago from the University of Pennsylvania. In terms of finances
the refurbishment of this space cost around seven million pounds,
together with the equipment that’s gone into it but, human
effort, a lot of people have put a tremendous amount of effort into
bringing this to fruition”.
02:14 Researcher
at Self Sorting Flow Cytometer – various shots
Researchers
preparing tissue samples
Guide Voice: The unit brings together a wide
range of researchers, allowing them to share ideas and advance
basic scientific understanding of infectious disease.
Researchers at King’s are working towards a better
understanding of infectious disease in humans, hoping to develop
new strategies and vaccines to deal with illnesses that claim
millions of lives worldwide every year; illnesses such as HIV and
Aids, which currently affect over 40 million people worldwide, with
8,000 deaths and 14,000 new infections every day.
02:48 SOT: Prof. Michael Malim -
“Infection and immunity brings together the disease
causing agent, the pathogen, virus if you like, together with how
the host responds to that through its immune response and to make
progress in vaccine design and design of new therapeutics one needs
to have both arms of the equation working together for these common
goals. So it’s very, very important these two units should be
placed close to each other and interact on a daily basis. Having a
facility like this will support those types of interaction –
people bumping into each other, chatting about their research, and
hopefully that is where the next wave of advances will come
from.”
03:27 GVs
Laboratories
Various
shots, researchers in laboratory
Guide Voice: Studies at the facility
investigate the genetic basis of disease susceptibility and
resistance and the team have published several high profile papers.
How close are they to major breakthroughs in this field?
03:40 SOT: Professor Adrian Hayday, Kay Glendinning
Professor of Immunobiology and Chair of the Peter Gorer Department
of Immunobiology, King's College London -
“It’s very clear that research that has come out
from the staff in this programme, of well, since the turn of the
Millennium let’s say, has had a major impact. It’s had
a major impact on understanding specifically innate responses to
human immunodeficiency virus (HIV); it’s also had a major
impact on how people view white blood cells functioning in the
tissues where we get challenged – the gut, the skin and
likewise. The application of that knowledge, as the public are
probably to some extent tired of hearing, takes a while, though I
think it’s fair to say that knowledge that’s come out
of here will find its application.”
04:25
End
