Alistair McGregor, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Department of Pediatrics
Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease

Congenital infection of newborns by human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) can lead to serious symptomatic disease including mental retardation and hearing loss. My interests in this disease are aimed at the development of an effective vaccine against the virus as well as novel antiviral intervention strategies against congenital CMV infection (McGregor and Schleiss, 2007; Schleiss et al 2006a,b). Our studies involve the use of specific animal models to identify genes related to viral pathogenicity via the manipulation of the CMV genome cloned as infectious bacterial artificial chromosomes (McGregor et al, 2004 a,b). Additionally, since species specificity of HCMV requires the use of animal specific CMV in their respective host this leads to an inferior model for the study of intervention strategies. Currently we are improving these animal models by ¿humanizing¿ the animal CMVs by the substitution of animal CMV genes with specific HCMV genes to generate chimeric viruses. These chimeric viruses should be more relevant for the study of HCMV antiviral therapy as well as the testing of candidate HCMV vaccines in an animal model (McGregor et al, 2007).

Selected Publications:

McGregor, A., Liu, F., Schleiss, MR. (2004a). Molecular, biological, and in vivo characterization of the guinea pig cytomegalovirus (GCMV) homologs of the human CMVmatrix proteins pp71 (UL82) and pp65 (UL83). J. Virol. 78 (18), 9872-9889.

McGregor, A., Liu, F., Schleiss, MR. (2004b). Identification of essential and non-essential genes of the guinea pig cytomegalovirus (GPCMV) genome via transposome mutagenesis of an infectious BAC clone. Virus Res. 101 (2), 101-108.

McGregor, A. and Schleiss, MR. (2007). Guinea pig cytomegalovirus GP84 is a functional homolog of the human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) UL84 gene that can compliment for the loss of UL84 in a chimeric HCMV. J. Gen. Virol. (in press).

McGregor, A., Choi AK, Cui, X., McVoy MA., Schleiss MR. (2007). Human cytomegalovirus UL97 gene in a chimeric guinea pig cytomegalovirus results in viable virus with increased susceptibility to Ganciclovir and Maribavir. Antiviral Res. (in press).

Schleiss MR, Stroup G, Pogorzelski K, McGregor A. (2006a). Protection against congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease, conferred by a replication-disabled, bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC)-based DNA vaccine. Vaccine. 24(37-39), 6175-86.

Schleiss, MR., Anderson, JL., McGregor, A. (2006b). Cyclic cidofovir (cHPMPC) prevents congenital cytomegalovirus infection in a guinea pig model. Virol. J. (3), 9-15.

Other links

http://www.virology.umn.edu/virology/Investigators/mcgregor.html