Thematic Support - Vaccines and Immunity

In addition to clean water, vaccines are the most powerful interventions to prevent morbidity and mortality worldwide.
The research carried out in our Theme supports the implementation of safe and effective vaccines in sub-Saharan Africa, so they can be used with confidence and their delivery optimised.
We also want to understand the details of how vaccines interact with the developing immune system of babies and young children, and how we might be able to use them during pregnancy to protect both the mother and/or the unborn baby against certain infectious diseases.
Our clinical trials are delivering the information that is needed for licensure and trust in vaccines, and we are working closely with communities, scientists in the laboratory and public health organisations to optimise the protection for all that can be achieved through vaccination.
Our tuberculosis program looks at better ways to diagnose TB in adults and children and how we can possibly predict treatment responses in order to avoid long term poor outcomes from TB and prevent transmission in the community.
In all we do we work closely with the public health systems in the country and communities to make sure our research is accepted and contributes to change for better health for all.

The Vaccines & Immunity (V&I) Theme aims to contribute to the evidence-based development and delivery
of vaccines through integration of laboratory science with clinical trials and longitudinal cohort studies,
including for tuberculosis. Using cutting-edge immunological methods and bioinformatic approaches, we
investigate host responses in individuals of different ages and dissect the interactions between host and
pathogen under vaccine or disease pressures. We have worked towards a better understanding of the
ontogeny of immunity to inform the next generation of vaccines, and we have a large portfolio of clinical
trials to assess safety, immunogenicity and efficacy of novel vaccines and to nurture trust in these interventions.
There are several specific workstreams:
1. New interventions to protect pregnant women and their infants against vaccine-preventable morbidity and mortality
Amongst the interventions to improve the unacceptably high morbidity and mortality in women and young
children, vaccination of pregnant women could be a valuable approach; this concept is already established
for neonatal tetanus in Africa and for influenza and pertussis in high-income settings. New vaccines aimed at
licensure for use specifically in pregnancy are on the horizon (RSV, Group B streptococcus) and our theme is
playing an active role in their assessment and implementation through clinical trials and embedded laboratory science to learn more about the immune responses the vaccines induce.
2. Optimising vaccines, schedules and delivery against key pathogens affecting the health of women and
children
Our research supports the WHO’s Immunization agenda to make sure that ultimately, everyone, everywhere, at every age, can fully benefit from vaccines.
We run clinical trials that lead to licensure of highly protective and more cost-effective vaccines, e.g against causes of bacterial meningitis and pneumonia, viral diseases e.g. cervical cancer, polio, and we work towards optimisation of vaccine delivery and -schedules. We use geospatial mapping methods and social science approaches to understand why not all children in the region receive timely vaccinations.
3. Understanding immune ontogeny through systems biology
Systems biology provides new tools to unravel the complex interactions between the different immune compartments; vaccination represents a controlled intervention which allows probing in unprecedented depth the pathways for immune development. We conduct in depth multi-omic analyses of different immune compartments, incl mucosal immunity using optimised laboratory protocols that require minimal blood volumes.
4. Tuberculosis (TB) in adults and children
The Gambia remains endemic for TB, with a prevalence rate of 128/100 000 and an average of 3,800 new
cases per year. We are ideally placed for in-depth immunological and microbiological analyses, using a well characterised household contact cohort (the TBCC) approach which facilitates long-term follow up and has resulted in longstanding track record in TB transmission dynamics research. We work towards
identification of novel biomarkers of TB susceptibility and risk of progression to inform correlates of protection which in turn will serve vaccine development, and to develop novel diagnostics, prevent childhood TB and
understand long-term TB sequelae.