London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Please note that this event has now been moved to a virtual session. The joining link is listed at the bottom of the page.

Human infection studies are a powerful tool for target antigen identification, selection, prioritisation and development especially in the context of naturally acquired immunity. These models are important in the vaccine development pipeline with the potential for down-selection of candidate vaccines and other interventions such as drugs through efficacy testing and evaluation. These platforms have the potential to further identify correlates of protection and/or correlates of immunity that have remained poorly defined in epidemiological studies.  

A controlled human malaria infection platform has been established in Kenya and furthermore, an enteric, Shigella, human infection model will be established within the same setting. There is further potential for the establishment of a malaria blood-stage infection model and a sporozoite-based transmission model.  

The talk will focus on how these models have been used and are being implemented in an endemic setting to leverage these human infection models to understand naturally acquired immunity, identify vaccine candidates, and evaluate the efficacy of interventions. 

Speaker  

Dr Melissa Kapulu is a Principal Research Investigator based at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, Kilifi Kenya and Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health, University of Oxford, Oxford UK. She received her training in immunology and vaccinology at LSHTM (MSc in Immunology of Infectious Diseases) and at the Jenner Institute, University of Oxford (DPhil on malaria transmission-blocking vaccines). She runs a research group and programme of work that includes better understanding of naturally acquired immunity for the design, development, and testing of vaccines (pre-clinical and clinical). Her work further involves understanding mechanisms of immunity following both infection (natural and induced) and vaccination. Primary area of interest includes malaria and Shigella. Her work involves developing and/or establishing controlled human infection models, to identify, characterise, understand, and evaluate vaccines, in disease endemic populations. She has successfully trained and supervised young scientists at BSc, MSc, and PhD level. 

The Greenwood Africa Award

Dr Melissa Kapulu and Dr Corine Ngufor are joint recipients of the 2022 Greenwood Africa Award. The awards will be conferred at LSHTM’s Graduation Ceremonies in July 2022.

Greenwood Africa Lecture 2022 with Dr Corine Ngufor - 26 July 2022

Please note that the recording link will be listed on this page when available.