Dr. Joannah Fergusson is a Scientific Officer at the Kennedy Institute and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at the University of Oxford. Throughout her career, she has focused on human immunology and the development of in vitro models of human immunity. Currently, she employs these models to investigate the mechanisms of action of various vaccine modalities to design more effective vaccines against infectious diseases, including SARS-CoV-2. Her research aims to identify early events in inflammation within human lymph nodes that influence the generation of protective immunity. Additionally, her team seeks to extend this work to other tissues and chronic inflammatory diseases, with the goal of characterizing common inflammatory pathways and identifying potential therapeutic targets. In her presentation, she will discuss the development of precision-cut slicing of human lymph nodes, alongside state-of-the-art techniques such as single-cell RNASeq and hyperplexed imaging, to establish a model of adjuvant-induced inflammation.In this webinar, Dr.Ferguson will:

  • Summarize the challenges associated with developing new vaccine modalities.
  • Introduce precision-cut lymph node slices as a model for vaccine studies, focusing on vaccine adjuvants.
  • Describe the mechanism of action of an open-source adjuvant derived from the study of human lymph node slices.