Award Title: Vaccines and Immunity
Funder: Medical Research Council

Abstract: Too many young children continue to die of diseases that can potentially be prevented by vaccines, and we want to optimise the use of this potentially lifesaving intervention. In order to make the safest and most efficient vaccines, we have to understand well how the immune system of small children works, and we now have the tools to gather much deeper insights.
We use sophisticated technologies such as flow cytometry (to study cells), gene expression and proteomics (to study proteins) in the labs to analyse small blood samples taken during the conduct of our clinical studies. We can now study cells and blood components in great detail to understand their complex interactions and the impact of age on their composition. This is likely to matter for the way we design our vaccines.
The team is also exploring the safe use of vaccines in pregnant women as a tool to decrease illness and deaths in their newborn babies through the antibodies that get transmitted during pregnancy. We want to know, which germs make the babies ill, where they come from and how vaccines might be able to prevent these infections, for example Group B strep infection, which causes meningitis and blood poisoning.
A lot of children also suffer from TB, and we are working to make better diagnostics and to make sure that preventive measures that we already know can work are also actually implemented.

Technical Summary
The overarching aim of Prof Kampmann’s research is to improve the development and deployment of life-saving vaccines, in particular for the prevention of early life morbidity and mortality, but increasingly across the life-course of vaccination, with a specific focus on vaccination in pregnancy. As one of the three theme leaders at the MRC Unit in The Gambia, Prof Kampmann oversees all research activities in infant immunology, childhood tuberculosis and molecular diagnostics. The research ranges from basic laboratory research studying innate and acquired immune responses to infection and vaccination in pregnant women and infants through a systems biology approach to the conduct of clinical trials of novel vaccines, adjuvants and administration modalities. We are currently evaluating vaccines against pneumococcus, pertussis, meningococcus, HPV, Yellow Fever, malaria in a large number of phase 2,3 and 4 clinical trials. Our aim is to embed as much discovery science in the conduct of these clinical trials as feasible, and we have pioneered the use of small blood samples to derive big data in Africa. In addition, our work includes social science research into factors influencing uptake of vaccines in the African context and evaluation of tools for improving understanding and uptake of vaccines. As the director of IMPRINT- the IMmunising PRegnant women and INfants network, one of the 5 MRC-funded networks for vaccines (www.imprint-network.co.uk), and the Vaccine Centre at the LSHTM in the UK (https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/research/centres/vaccine-centre), Prof Kampmann has forged links with a growing number of vaccinology investigators in Africa. We are also working with WHO and UNICEF to investigate additional factors influencing maternal and neonatal health, such as investigating the aetiology of neonatal infections and their potential prevention through novel vaccines, such as against Group B streptococcus and other emerging pathogens.
Our childhood TB program currently extends into 4 African countries and employs transcriptomic and proteomic methodologies to advance novel diagnostics for childhood TB as well as forming closer interactions with national TB programs to enhance knowledge about childhood TB and implementation of preventive measures. It is closely aligned with the work on adult TB at the MRC Unit, which aims at the discovery of predictive biomarkers of risk to progression from TB infection to TB disease and studies of long-term outcome of TB patients.


Research Activity Codes: 2.2 FACTORS RELATING TO PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT;3.4 VACCINES;4.1 DISCOVERY AND PRECLINICAL TESTING OF MARKERS AND TECHNOLOGIES
Health Categories: INFECTION