Malaria Immunology and Vaccination

Wednesday, 02 July 2014

www.regonline.co.uk/ImmMal2014

Cineworld: The O2, London, SE10 0DX, UK

This event will discuss the mechanisms of immunity and immunopathology in order to facilitate vaccine design and the identification of additional therapies for treatment of severe malaria. There will be plenty of opportunities for debate and networking.

This event has CPD accreditation

This event is part of The Beating Malaria Summit London 2014- BeatingMalariaLondon2014.com

The Deadline for abstract submissions for oral presentation is April 10th 2014

Abstracts for poster presentation only can be submitted up to two weeks before the event

.You can download the instructions for authors at

www.euroscicon.com/AbstractsForOralAndPosterPresentation.pdf

Talk times include 5 – 10 minutes for questions

9:00 – 9:45 Registration

9:45 – 10:00 Introduction by the Chair:

10:00 – 10:30 Talk to be confirmed

10:30 – 11:00 Talk to be confirmed

Dr Irene Gramaglia, Associate Professor, La Jolla Infectious Disease Institute, United States

11:00 – 11:30 Speakers’ photo then mid-morning break and poster exhibition and trade show

Please try to visit all the exhibition stands during your day at this event. Not only do our sponsors enable Euroscicon to keep the registration fees competitive, but they are also here specifically to talk to you

11:30 – 12:00 Severe malaria episodes inhibit germinal centre reactions and development of humoral immunity

Dr Diana Hansen, Laboratory Head, The Walter & Eliza Hall Institute, Australia

Despite the key role that antibodies play in protection against malaria, the cellular processes leading to the slow acquisition of immunity remain unknown. Children in high transmission settings that experience frequent clinical episodes are characterised by a delayed development of memory B cells, suggesting that the inflammatory factors contributing to disease hinder these responses. To address that hypothesis we used a severe malaria infection model to investigate the development of germinal centres, memory B cells and plasma cells. We found that clinical malaria negatively impacts humoral immunity by inhibiting critical early stages in the development of the B cell response.

12:00 – 12:30 ORAL PRESENTATIONS

12:30 – 13:30 Lunch, poster exhibition and trade show

13:30 – 14:30 Discussion Panel

14: 30 – 15:00 Talk to be confirmed

Dr Pierre Guermonprez, Center for Molecular and Cellular Biology of Inflammation, King’s College London, United Kingdom

15:00 – 15:30 Afternoon Tea, last poster session and trade show

15:30 – 16:00 TAntibody longevity to malaria vaccine candidate antigens in immuno-epidemiology studies

Dr Freya Fowkes, Head of Malaria and Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Burnet Institute, Australia

It is widely said that anti-malarial antibodies are very short-lived, but there are little published data that address this question. How antibodies to malaria vaccine candidate antigens are acquired, maintained and persist in field settings is therefore unclear. In our program of research we examine antibody levels to antigens expressed by various life-cycle stages of P. falciparum and P. vivax in multiple population-based studies. Data generated are valuable for predicting the duration of responses induced by candidate malaria vaccines and identifying issues to address in vaccine development if vaccines are to provide extended protection over many years.

16:00 – 16:30 Talk to be confirmed

Dr Joyce M. Velez, La Jolla Infectious Disease Institute, United States

16:30 - 17:00 Talk to be confirmed

Dr Britta Urban, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom

17:00 Chairman’s summing up

About the Speakers

Britta Urban obtained a PhD at the Bernhard-Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany in 1996, investigating complement resistance of Enatamoeba histolytica. She joined the David Roberts’ laboratory at Oxford University on a Research Fellowship awarded by the German Research Council to study immune responses toPlasmodium falciparum malaria. She demonstrated that P. falciparum-infected erythrocytes modulate dendritic cell phenotype and function in vitro. These results formed the basis of a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship where she investigated the role of dendritic cells in natural malaria infection in close collaboration with the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Collaborative Programme in Kilifi, Kenya. She was awarded a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship in 2006 and has now moved with her group to Kilifi to study cellular immune responses to PfEMP-1. She is particularly interested to investigate whether the phenotypic properties of a given parasite isolate influence the immune response to that isolate.

An NHMRC Public Health Fellow, Freya Fowkes is Head of the Malaria and Infectious Disease Epidemiology group at the Burnet Institute. Freya is involved primarily in examining the epidemiology of malaria in particular analysing malaria immuno-epidemiological data from large population-based studies. She completed her doctorate in 2007 at the University of Oxford and has held research associate positions at the New York University School of Medicine and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. Currently, Freya holds an adjunct senior research fellow position at Monash University and is an honorary fellow of the University of Melbourne.

Diana S. Hansen completed her PhD in 1998 at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She turned to malaria research during her postdoctoral training at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Melbourne, where she investigated inflammatory responses involved in the induction of cerebral malaria. Diana is now a Laboratory Head in the Division of Infection and Immunity at WEHI and an Executive Member of the Victorian Infection and Immunity Network. Her main research interests include mechanisms of pathogenesis and immunity to malaria, and she is pursuing those goals using infection models as well as humans studies.

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