Today was a momentous day for Felicia Watson who defended her malaria vaccine thesis today in the Pathobiology Graduate Program. Soon-to-be Dr. Watson's thesis was focused on translational approaches to improving prime-and-trap vaccination intended to achieve highly protective and durable T cell-based immunity in the liver. Her pioneering work has brought us closer than ever to moving prime-and-trap into large animal models and eventually into humans. This type of malaria vaccine may be able to achieve protection that is considerably higher than for the WHO-approved RTS,S and R21 antibody-based vaccines. Felicia's accomplishments including showing that cryopreserved sporozoites can be substituted for fresh sporozoites, that glycolipid adjuvants significantly potentiate vaccine efficacy, and that ultra-low intradermal dosing of sporozoites can also improve sporozoite vaccine administration by a clinically acceptable administration route. She's already published two papers and a third is in review. We are all grateful that Felicia chose to focus her PhD training on malaria! Thanks also to Felicia's friends and family to traveled here from out of state or joined us on Zoom for the event. Congrats!
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