
Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert
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- Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert
Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert
Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert will give the Keynote Opening Address at the 62nd LIYSF.
Professor Gilbert is the Saïd Professorship of Vaccinology, Jenner Institute & Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford and co-founder of Vaccitech
Professor Gilbert is the woman who designed the Oxford vaccine for COVID-19 and was awarded a damehood by HM The Queen in 2021 for this work.
For over fifteen years Professor Gilbert has been making and testing vaccines, which are designed with the aim of inducing T cell responses. Her work has largely been focused on using antigens from influenza, tuberculosis and malaria. A number of the vaccines she has developed have progressed to clinical trials.
Her previous success has been with heterologous prime-boost regimes using either arecombinant fowlpox or a DNA vaccine or an adenovirus. to prime a response and recombinant MVA (Modified Vaccinia Ankara) to boost it. Her laboratory has also created two new Influenza A vaccines, ChAdOx1 NP+M1 and MVA-NP+M1.
Recent work has looked to developing vaccines for pathogens such as Lassa, CCHF, MERS and Nipah (both emerging and re-emerging) and clinical trials are currently in process for MERS in Saudi Arabia, where the virus is endemic after successful UK trials.
Professor Gilbert is the co-founder of Vaccitech ( University of Oxford spin-company) and have developed the the Oxford vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, as well as novel vaccines using Modified Vaccinia Ankara (MVA) and the non-replicating viral vectors Chimpanzee Adenovirus Oxford (ChAdOx).
In March 2021 Gilbert was awarded the Albert Medal for her work in developing the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine