Agness has been approved for a three-month placement at Ragon Institute of MGH, Harvard University in the USA, on the Systems Serology Platform by the BactiVac Operational Management Group.
Asked how this is of importance to her career progression, Agness had this to say, “the proposed training is pivotal to my career development as a Ph.D. student. I am working on mapping and defining the functional humoral correlates of immunity to iNTS using systems serology in my Ph.D. project. This training will provide me an opportunity to interact with leading experts on systems serology and gain knowledge as well as provide a platform for me to develop professional relationships with them. I will gain skills that will enable me to set up systems serology platforms, which can then be used for various studies within the OptiVaNTs studies at MLW and across Malawi. In addition, I will be able to train other scientists on the platforms.”
With an established platform, Malawi will become a future regional field site for functional and experimental immunogenicity work for new vaccines as they enter clinical development and are deployed across Africa thereby accelerating vaccine development.
Agness joined MLW in 2019 as a Pre-PhD intern under the Immunity and Infectious group, working on two studies supervised by Dr. Kondwani Jambo and Professor Henry Mwandumba. She further worked as a Research Assistant within the same group and was part of a team investigating immunological markers associated with protective immunity against SARS-CoV-2, a virus that causes Covid-19 disease. Currently, as a Ph.D. student registered with the University of Liverpool and working on “Profiling naturally induced humoral immunity against invasive non-typhoidal Salmonella using systems serology”, in the Salmonella and Enterics research group and is being supervised by Professor Melita Gordon, Dr. Tonney Nyirenda, and Dr. Kondwani Jambo.
She describes this experience as one which has greatly enhanced her research skills and passion for immunology as he was fascinated with learning and applying modern immunology research approaches toward understanding how the host survives during infections. This led to the development of her current Ph.D. concept, in which she aims to examine the antibody features and assess the mechanisms behind specific responses, and identify features required for superior functional activity induced by iNTS infection for future vaccine designs.
Systems serology is a combination of high throughput experimental techniques aimed at dissecting antibody features and functions, followed by a variety of computational methods to interrogate and provide an unprecedented depth of understanding of the profiled antibodies. The training will add value to the Optimizing Vaccination for iNTS disease in Africa (OptiVaNTs) study and is key to enabling the systems serology platform to be transferred to Malawi. The training will support collaboration and accelerate the development of capacity for future vaccine studies that will be conducted in Malawi, including priority pathogens such as Covid, Shigella, Malaria, Typhoid, and Pneumococcus.
Bravo Agness!
