The Guzzo Lab @ UTSC 🇨🇦🦠🧬🔬

This week we celebrated with our 4th annual ‘State of the Lab’ address. Our past year was commemorated with: ☕️📄manuscript mugs for our 3 recent papers; 👩🏻‍🔬🍺 a beaker mug for our outgoing high-school co-op student; and a big virus cookie! 🍪

What an honour it was to meet you at @UofT (where it all began!) today, Dr. Iwasaki @VirusesImmunity. You continue to inspire so many with your outstanding science and service! 👏🏼🤩 And today I learned you are also so humble, genuine, and kind! Keep blazing! 🙌🏼🔥

We attended the Canadian Society for Virology meeting @usask this week #CSV2024 So proud of my students, winning poster awards & giving outstanding rapid fire talks! 😎 What a privilege to be part of the @CanSocVirol community! Thanks to our colleagues supporting our work! 🙏🏼

Warm weather & conference season is finally here, hooray! 😎 🏆Congrats to Arvin, my stellar PhD student on his well-deserved conference award @UofTCellSysBiol @UtscBiology 🚴🏽‍♀️Celebrating this new season with my first bike to work of 2024, enjoying our beautiful @UTSC campus

We used our lab's unique flow virometry protocols to demonstrate LPS loading on virus particles, and then showed that LPS-loaded viruses could trigger TLR4 signalling and inflammatory cytokine expression.

🚨New paper alert: HIV acts as a viral courier for LPS! 🚛🦠 Our paper today in @JVirology shows that HIV particles with CD14 on their surface can bind bacterial LPS, and shuttle LPS to bystander immune cells to elicit TLR4 signalling and gene expression: journals.asm.org/doi/full/10…

Felt super special bringing my PhD supervisor @kgeekat to come see my own lab @UTSC Bonus: having my F1 join, and her getting very excited about science, too! 🧪 Grateful to have had such a supportive and fun mentor to start my career! 🙏🏼👩🏻‍🔬 #mentorship #womeninSTEM

Was great to connect with @UofT Dept of Immunology students and faculty while running @HighParkNC today! @uoftmedicine Kudos to past and present dept chairs toeing the line and making it look easy!

Guzzo lab has made new & exciting discoveries on #HIV! 🤩 We used flow virometry to screen the HIV surface for 360 different human proteins, and discovered CD38, CD97 & CD278 present at high levels An ambitious and fruitful study! 💪🏻😎 Paper link here: nature.com/articles/s41598-0…

The Guzzo Lab reflected on our year of achievements by reading our lab memory cards, and an afternoon at the Christmas market @DistilleryTO 👏🥂🎄 We are wishing everyone a restful and memorable holiday with loved ones! 🥰

Another week of lab milestones: We celebrated our first grad student’s wedding, and our first PhD student convocation! #uoftgrad2023 @UTSC @UtscBiology Felt proud repping my @queensu regalia, and remembering all those good old days @kgeekat

Grateful to receive the 2023 Principal's Pre-Tenure Faculty Research Award @UTSCresearch @UtscBiology Even more proud to accept the award with family at my side! Thanks to @UTSC for organizing a family friendly awards event, and acknowledging our supporters behind the scenes.

Proudly announcing our first Guzzo Lab PhD Defense!🏆 Congrats to twitterless, newly minted ‘Dr’ Jonathan Burnie! 👏🏼 Many thanks to @UtscBiology committee members, and examiners near @thegrandlocus and far @tmurooka2. Next stop for JB is @KizzyPhD_Lab, over to you @KizzyPhD!

A Guzzo lab hike in the Rouge Valley @RougePark to celebrate our recent successes and summer birthdays, and laugh a little! @UtscBiology @LamannaBakery

We celebrated World AIDS Day & put up our lab Christmas tree! #WorldAIDSDay2022 We are looking forward to a big year ahead with some brewing community connections & clinical HIV research! @CANFAR @UTSCresearch @UofTEPIC

Learned SO much about EVs at #ISEVxTECH to apply to our HIV research! Highlights: 🧪data comparisons across many technologies 👐🏼6+ hrs of hands-on demos 🍹connecting with our fav collaborator (V Tang @uOttawaMed ) 🌴sunrise runs & hikes 😷COVID-safe meals on my hotel balcony

Tis' the season of sick toddlers, and the time to #BringBackMasks & get💉. Thankful for my health and many privileges to be able to sneak in a morning stroller run to the beach on these stressful days of WFH with littles. 🙏🏼 @RougePark @WaterfrontTO @AcademicMamas #AutumnVibes