A Vaccine for Leprosy?
https://www.youtube.com/embed/DAfGjDs_V98
This event took place on 28 June 2022, Online via Zoom
About the Seminar: A talk followed by an open forum/Q&A
This seminar was the third in our "A Vaccine for" seminar series, in which leading experts will provide an overview of the state of vaccine research for VAIDATE’s focus pathogens. In "A Vaccine for Leprosy?", Dr Khushboo Borah and Dr Chyntia Carolina Díaz Acosta discussed the prospects for a vaccine for Leprosy, the disease caused by Mycobacteria Leprae of which there are still over 200,000 new cases of diagnosed every year.
As well as providing a background to the disease, the seminar will explored mechanisms of Schwann cells modulation by M. leprae with emphasis on host lipid metabolism. Dr Diaz Acosta also discussed her current research project focusing on an associated biomarker search in leprosy patients and household contacts.
Speakers:
Dr Khushboo Borah Slater is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Surrey, UK. Khushboo graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India in 2013 with an engineering degree in Biotechnology and secured DPhil (PhD) from the University of Oxford in 2018. She joined the University of Surrey in 2016 and her current research is focused on host-pathogen metabolic interactions and the identification of metabolic drug targets in the two major mycobacterial pathogens- Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium leprae.
Dr Chyntia Carolina Díaz is a Researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencias de la Salud, Paraguay. Chyntia graduated from the Faculty of Chemical Sciences-National University of Asunción in 2003 and obtained PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from FIOCUZ, Brazil in 2016. Cynthia’s main area of expertise in research is in infectious diseases, with an emphasis on Biochemistry, Cellular-Molecular Biology and Immunology. Part of her work is based on the pathogenesis mechanisms of Mycobacterium leprae with emphasis on pathogen-host cell interaction and the use of specific synthetic peptides of M. leprae or M. tuberculosis.
