HIC VAC - Key Persons

4. P. M. Folegatti, M. Bittaye, A. Flaxman et al. Safety and immunogenicity of a candidate Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus viral-vectored vaccine: a dose-escalation, open-label, non-randomised, uncontrolled, phase 1 trial. Lancet ID 2020

ANDREW J POLLARD, FRCPCH PhD FMedSci, is Professor of Paediatric Infection and Immunity at the University of Oxford, Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, Fellow of St Cross College and Honorary Consultant Paediatrician at the Children's Hospital, Oxford, UK. He obtained his medical degree at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School, University of London in 1989 and trained in Paediatrics at Birmingham Children's Hospital, UK, specialising in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at St Mary's Hospital, London, UK and at British Columbia Children's Hospital, Vancouver, Canada. He obtained his PhD at St Mary's Hospital, London, UK in 1999 studying immunity to Neisseria meningitidis in children and proceeded to work on anti-bacterial innate immune responses in children in Canada before returning to his current position at the University of Oxford, UK in 2001. He received the Bill Marshall award of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Disease (ESPID) in 2013 for his contribution to the specialty and the ESPID Distinguished Award for Education & Communication in 2015. He was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2016. He chaired the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) meningitis guidelines development group, and the NICE topic expert group developing quality standards for management of meningitis and meningococcal septicaemia. He chairs the UK Department of Health's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and the European Medicines Agency scientific advisory group on vaccines and is a member of WHO's SAGE. His research includes the design, development and clinical evaluation of vaccines including those for meningococcal disease and enteric fever and leads studies using a human challenge model of (para)typhoid. He has a particular interest in the development of B cell immunity in early childhood. He runs surveillance for invasive bacterial diseases and studies the impact of pneumococcal vaccines in children in Nepal and leads a project on burden and transmission of typhoid in Nepal, Bangladesh and Malawi and co-leads typhoid vaccine impact studies at these sites. He has supervised 23 PhD students and his publications include over 300 manuscripts and books on various topics in paediatrics and infectious diseases. He made the first British ascents of Jaonli (6632m) and Chamlang (7309m), was the Deputy leader of the 1994 British Mount Everest Medical Expedition and is a member of the Alpine Club.

Job Titles:

• Research Associate

Alice Halliday received her BSc in Microbiology from the University of Manchester in 2008, which included a 10-month placement studying immune responses to placental malaria infection in the MRC laboratories in The Gambia. She subsequently worked as a research assistant on an NHS-funded project exploring health care needs in relation to immunisation uptake in Manchester. In 2013, she completed her PhD at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) exploring the immune responses in the parasitic disease, Leishmaniasis. Her first postdoc, also at LSTM, involved the development of models of Onchocerciasis for drug screening, both in the UK and in Cameroon. In 2014, Dr Halliday moved to Imperial College where her work has been focused on exploring cellular immune responses in Tuberculosis, with a particular interest in the development of new diagnostic tools for individuals with either active TB (especially hard-to diagnose groups) or latent TB infection. She has a keen interest in clinical immunology research, vaccines and human models of infection.

Job Titles:

• Senior Research Scientist

Ally Olotu is a senior research scientist working with Ifakara Health Institute, Bagomoyo, Tanzania, and an affiliate of KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Program. He has an MD degree from University of Dar es salaam and DPhil in clinical epidemiology and vaccinology from University of Oxford, UK. His interest is in malaria epidemiology and clinical trials investigating the safety and efficacy of public health innovation including vaccines and drugs in low and middle income countries (LMICs).

Dr Flaxman has always been interested in translational research. She has worked on both pre-clinical studies developing vaccines for outbreak pathogens, such as Ebola, and clinical trials for pre-erythrocytic Malaria (including a human challenge model) and outbreak pathogens, such as Ebola, and MERS and Ebola. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked on immune responses to the Oxford ChAdOx1-nCoV vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 currently in Phase III clinical trials. Dr Flaxman led the lab team carrying out antibody testing post vaccination. She was interested in the difference in antibody responses induced over time with different doses of vaccine, in different age groups and how this changes with administration of a booster vaccine. She now works at the Oxford Vaccine Group as a Senior Post-Doctoral Researcher. In this role, she leads the lab team delivereing clincal studies investigating enteric fever, including testing vaccine immunogenicity and efficacy using human challenge models. She is interested in immunological correlates of protection.

Job Titles:

• Consultant Respiratory Physician / MRC CARP Fellow

Dr Shah is a Consultant Respiratory Physician and MRC CARP fellow with an interest in understanding the immune drivers of respiratory infection with a particular interest in bronchiectasis and respiratory fungal sensitisation and infection.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
• Research Director of INSERM

Job Titles:

• Medical Officer in Pakistan
• Student

Dr Muhammad Idrees is a Medical Officer in Pakistan who has served for more than four years in the domain of Health on various position as Community Vaccination Centre (CVC) In-Charge as well as Team leader for RR-Il team to track, trace and home isolate people with COVID-19.He has served as Chairman Committee for Polio eradication in tribal and rural areas of his country.He was nominated for World Health Organisation (WHO) TDR scholarship for EMRO region. Currently, he is pursuing Master in Vaccinology Education, which is master program modelled for contemporary industrial as well as research oriented needs for vaccines under the umbrella of Five top EU universities.

Patricia Njuguna was educated at the University of Nairobi. She specialised in Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of Nairobi, Paediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Oxford and Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She worked as the Head of the Clinical Trials Unit, KEMRI Kilifi Kenya and led the clinical aspects for the Malaria Challenge studies and Ebola vaccine studies. More recently, Dr Njuguna worked with the World Health Organisation on the evaluation of the Malaria Vaccine implementation. She is currently working as Senior Medical Officer at PATH.

Job Titles:

• Executive Director

Gagandeep (Cherry) Kang is the Executive Director, Translational Health Science Technology Institute (THSTI), an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology from August 2016. The THSTI has a mission to conduct innovative translational research across disciplines to understand disease biology accelerate development of concepts into products and strategies for public health. AT THSTI, she is exploring the possibilities of establishing controlled human infection models for diseases relevant to India. Prior to her appointment at THSTI, she was a Professor in the Division of Gastrointestinal Sciences at the Christian Medical College, Vellore. Over two decades, she built a research program that has conducted key studies to understand enteric infectious diseases in impoverished communities. Working in partnership with non-governmental organizations and the government, she has carried out phase I-III studies of rotaviral vaccines and provided laboratory support for vaccine development in India and for other developing countries. With the Indian Council for Medical Research and the World Health Organization, she has supported the establishment of networks of sentinel hospitals and laboratories that carry out surveillance for rotavirus disease in children and ancillary studies. She chairs the Immunization Technical Advisory Group for the WHO's South East Asian Region. She is an Independent Director of the Hilleman Laboratories, a partnership established to make affordable vaccines by Merck and the Wellcome Trust.

Job Titles:

• Assistant Director of Medical Laboratory Services
• Assistant Director, Medical Laboratory Services / Research Fellow

Nosakhare Idemudia is a Research Fellow and an Assistant Director of Medical Laboratory Services. His research is focused on antimicrobial chemotherapy and its relation to inflammation and anti-drug antibodies. He has a broad background in immunology, with specific training and expertise in flow cytometry and immunoassays. As a growing researcher, he has participated in several NIH-funded grants as a research assistant (MARGIN and DOMHaiN study). Nosakhare is the laboratory advisor in an ongoing NIH-funded research - HOMINY Study. As seen in some of his publications, he has used his expertise to provide laboratory technical support to implement these projects. He first became interested in immunology during his one-year internship after his first degree. He worked closely with the USAID-funded PEPFAR project at the Federal Medical Centre, Asaba, Delta State, Nigeria. This interest was further fired up during his M.Sc. programme in Medical Microbiology at the University of Benin, where he encountered Prof. I.O. Enabulele and Prof. N. O. Eghafona, who were bacteriologist and virologist, respectively. He had a great touch in immunology hence he continued to pursue this interest as a doctoral student of Immunology and Immunochemistry in the same University, where he conducted research with Prof. Helen Ogefere on Artemisinin Resistant Genes and Antibodies among Patients with Malaria in Benin City, Edo State. This has resulted in some co-authorship publications and an invitation to present a poster at the annual Oncological meeting in Denver, Colorado. Having concluded his postgraduate programme, Nosakhare wants to continue pursuing a long-term career in immunology research. For his initial project, he is researching drug antibodies and their relationship with the development of resistance and studies on the relationship of some surrogate markers of inflammation with some non-communicable disorders in HIV populations. His current research setting and becoming a member of the HIC-Vac network will provide a solid foundation for his long-term goal of becoming a renowned academic researcher.

Stephen Gordon was educated at the University of Cambridge and trained in General Medicine in Oxford, Zambia and Belfast. He specialised in Respiratory Medicine in Sheffield (Clinical Lecturer) and completed Wellcome Trust Training and Career Development Fellowships studying susceptibility to pulmonary infections in Malawi. Stephen Gordon worked at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine from 2005-15. He led the LSTM Respiratory Group who developed studies of the effect of biomass fuel smoke on defence against infection. The Respiratory Group at LSTM also has themes of research targeting vaccine discovery and testing, pathogenesis and the treatment of pneumococcal disease, using human samples from both healthy volunteers and patients. The team developed an Experimental Human Pneumococcal Carriage (EHPC) model in which healthy volunteers were challenged with pneumococci in order to study the immunological correlates of carriage, protection and clearance. Current work to exploit the EHPC model is underpinned by an MRC Programme grant. Stephen has recently taken up his appointment as Director of the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Programme of Clinical Tropical Research and renewed the core grant for 2018-2023. Under his leadership, the MLW Programme will work with the College of Medicine and partners to conduct research that benefits health and to develop leaders in translational research in Malawi and the region.

Job Titles:

• Professor Emeritus of Clinical Virology
• Professor Emeritus of Medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine

Dr Hayden is Stuart S. Richardson Professor Emeritus of Clinical Virology and Professor Emeritus of Medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. During 2006-2008 he served as a medical officer in the Global Influenza Programme at the World Health Organization (Geneva) and during 2008-2012 as influenza research coordinator at the Wellcome Trust (London). His principle research interests have been on respiratory viral infections with a particular focus on the development and application of antiviral agents for influenza, rhinovirus, and other respiratory viruses. He has published over 350 peer-reviewed articles, chapters, and reviews, and co-edits with Douglas Richman and Richard Whitley the textbook Clinical Virology, the fourth edition of which was recently published by the American Society for Microbiology. Dr Hayden chaired the writing committees for two WHO clinical consultations on avian H5N1 and one on pandemic 2009 H1N1 influenza, and continues to serve as a consultant to WHO on respiratory viral infections and emerging infectious diseases including avian influenza H7N9 virus, MERS-CoV, and Ebola virus. In 2012-13 he worked with WHO colleagues to develop a new initiative, the Battle against Respiratory Viruses (BRAVE), to foster research on this important public health problem. During his time at the Wellcome Trust he helped to establish the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC) to improve the clinical research response to respiratory and other emerging infectious disease threats. He is scientific advisor to the EU-funded Platform for European Preparedness Against (Re-) emerging Epidemics (PREPARE) and NIAID-funded University of Alabama Antiviral Drug Discovery and Development Consortium (AD3C). He is a member of multiple editorial boards including the Journal of Infectious diseases and a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, American Academy of Microbiology, American Society for Clinical lnvestiQation, and Association of American Physicians.