Jenner's legacy in the 21st century: triumphs and challenges in vaccination Event
- Time:
- 17:15 - 18:15
- Date:
- 23 May 2013
- Venue:
- Lecture Theatre 2, South Academic Block, Southampton General Hospital
For more information regarding this event, please telephone Ellen Lancaster on 023 8079 8134 or email medevent@southampton.ac.uk .
Event details
An Inaugural Lecture by Professor Aymen Al-Shamkhani. Thursday 23rd May 2013, 5.15-6.15pm, followed by wine and canapes.
Vaccination is one of the triumphs of medicine. Despite this success, the marked improvement in our understanding of the immune system has not been paralleled by advances in vaccine development. In this respect current vaccines are fundamentally similar to Jenner's small pox vaccine first administered to patients in the 18th century. As such most vaccines developed to date act through the production of antibodies, thus ignoring a powerful immune protection mechanism, namely the activation and recruitment of killer T cells. In this lecture Professor Al-Shamkhani will explore how an understanding of basic immunology can be applied to rationally design the next generation of vaccines.
Speaker information
Professor Aymen Al-Shamkhani,Professor Al-Shamkhani was appointed to a personal Chair in 2007 after joining the University of Southampton in 1998 as Lecture and then Reader in Immunology. He obtained his BSc (Biochemistry) and PhD from Keele University. He then took up postdoctoral work in the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology and the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford. While in Oxford, he developed an interest in Immunology particularly in T-cell activation and responses. Professor Al-Shamkhani now leads an internationally recognized group that investigates the function of molecules that control the activation and differentiation of T cells with the aim of developing new immunotherapies for cancer and inflammatory diseases.