Weekly round-up #253

Welcome New Members

We are very happy to welcome 14 new members to VALIDATE from 11 countries.

Investigators

• Prof Sanjib Bhakta from Birkbeck, University of London, UK
• Prof Margarida Correia-Neves from the University of Minho, Portugal

Associates

• Dr Deborah Chong from St George's University of London, UK
• Assistant Prof Menberework Negatue from Armauer Hansen Research Institute, Ethiopia
• Dr Thankgod Onuoha from Novena University, Nigeria
• Dr Lakhal Sami from Tunisia
• Mr Shivvrat Jha from Kasturba Medical College, India      

• Dr Dylan Sheerin from Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI), Australia

Affiliates

• Ms Priyanka Abraham from the University of Oxford, UK
• Miss Phoebe Davies from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) & the University of Exeter, UK
• Mr Jack Easton from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), UK 
• Dr Caryn Fenner from Afrigen Biologics, South Africa
• Ms Katie Harrison from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), UK
• Mr Raoul Kemzeu from the University of Yaounde I, Cameroon
• Mr Hamza Khalid from The Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh, UK
• Assistant Professor David Coulibaly N'golo from the Pasteur Institute of Cote d'Ivoire, Cote d'Ivoire
• Ms Salini Mohapatra from the Center for the Study of Complex Malaria, India
• Ms Sparsha Pallen from the Center for Molecular Neurosciences, Kasturba Medical College, India
• Dr Eugenia Puentes-Colorado from Institute: BIOFABRI, Spain
• Mr Bharti Singh from Mangalayatan University, India

We welcome new members (especially from LMICs)

Recently, the VALIDATE Community grew to over 600 VALIDATE members. This is great news, but we think we can do better. Though Lower and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) are well represented, we are perhaps not reaching as many researchers in the ‘least-developed’ countries list as we would like.

We are still missing connections in the below countries, so if you know any researchers there working on research contributing to the advancement of vaccines for our focus pathogens, please do invite them to join VALIDATE.

We are keen to be represented in the following LMICs:

If you know researchers in those countries, remind them about the benefits of VALDIATE membership and encourage them to join - www.validate-network.org/joining-validate

Publications:

• Leishmania tarentolae: a vaccine platform to target dendritic cells and a surrogate pathogen for next generation vaccine research in leishmaniases and viral infections, Bandi C et al, in Parasites and Vectos
• Preprint: Persistent T cell unresponsiveness associated with chronic visceral leishmaniasis in HIV-coinfected patients, VALIDATE Members Nicky de Vrij, Thao-Thy Pham, and Wim Adriaensen et al, in Nature Portfolio
• Patent: Synthetic biomarkers for differential serological diagnosis of cutaneous leishmaniasis (cl) caused by various leishmania species, Katja M et al, found on Espacenet

• The cost and cost-effectiveness of novel tuberculosis vaccines in low- and middle-income countries: A modeling study, Portnoy A, in Plos Medicine

Check out our Publications Page for members' publications and email VALIDATE@ndm.ox.ac.uk if you have a paper you would like us to include.