 My name is Eunice Nduati. I work at the Camry Wellcome Trust Research Program, which is based in Kili, Fikanya. I'm an immunologist by training and my area of research is that I'm interested in looking at immune responses to various infectious diseases that are common to the tropics. My initial work was in malaria and more recently I've been working in HIV, but as an immunologist the interest is looking at immune responses. So what you're interested in is how are you making a response to an antigen. So I'm not very particular what that antigen is as long as it's one of the big diseases in Africa which would be HIV or TB or malaria then I'm happy to do that. So I'm looking at the host immune responses so it doesn't matter whether it's malaria or HIV because you find that how you respond influences on the general health of the population and that's my main objective to be able to create solutions in terms of the sort of health of the people on the continent. The sort of work that we do is largely as a basic scientist we are interested in understanding immune responses. So we know that in a population you have people who will be exposed to a pathogen whatever that infection is and some people will make responses which seem to have better disease outcome or that they are protected from the infection and other people will not. And so basically what we're interested in seeing those people who make responses that protect them or give them better disease outcomes what is it that they are doing differently ideally what you would call looking for correlates of protection and by identifying what these correlates of protections are you're able to feed or influence or inform vaccine development because it helps you be able to identify which are relevant immunogens which can be helped or can downstream be used in designing appropriate vaccines for the population. A lot of the research work that's been going in the field I think like anything else you find that you have waves of certain interests we have a whole season where people who are very keen on looking for a T-cell immunogen for HIV research but more and more in the recent past there's been an interest in looking at humeral immune responses this is largely looking at antibody responses we find that in the last five to ten years a lot of work has gone into identifying what we call monoclonal antibodies these are antibodies that can prevent viral entry to a wide range of viruses so we call them broadly neutralizing antibodies and in the recent years they've been identification of quite a number of these and more recently you find that the whole concept of using monoclonal therapy is becoming a reality and currently there is a trial to try and see whether these monoclonal therapies can be used in the field to protect against HIV and there's currently a large trial that is being carried on in the US in Brazil and in South Africa and in the coming years I think we're going to get a lot of more input and information into where the whole concept of humeral immune responses will take us in terms of controlling HIV the other thing that has come which is big is the design of new immunogens immunogens are what you would call the vaccine candidates and these are moved towards designing immunogens which have a structure and function that is more similar to the virus that individual sees previously they used what we call monomeric targets which just had one portion but now you have more design of trimeric portions for example the BG 505 which is a clinical trial that is going to be happening in the US and partly in Kenya and our work here at the Kemiwelcome Trust program will be part of that in terms of just analyzing what sort of immune responses these vaccinated individuals generate. I think in terms of the actual vaccine you want a vaccine that is able to work across board and that's where you're looking for when you look at correlates of protection from the host you're looking at individuals who are able to make responses that are able to inhibit or to neutralize viruses across board so you don't want a vaccine that's only neutralizing clay day which is probably in Africa and not clay B that is in the west you want something that is going to be across board so there's the level of the actual immunogen you're designing and you would want that to be as broad as possible to cover all sorts of I mean the whole wide range of clades but also on the continent you'd also want to consider these other things that may influence the sort of immune responses because it's one thing to make a good vaccine but it's another thing to make a good vaccine is how do you implement it do you need to consider things like environmental exposures do you need to consider co-infections within that population do you need to consider genetics so working in context of where you're going to use it you're able to deal with all these other things or comparing between the two but I don't I don't imply that you don't work in other settings I think it's an issue of working within a framework that makes the best of that environment you may have very advanced technology in one setting which you should take advantage of that but also you may have a set up whereby you need to consider all these other factors and therefore combining both and working as a team you're able to come up with a product that is not only generates the immune responses that you want but it's also effective we work in a very unique sort of setting we're working in Africa and we know that there's a whole big the continent bears the largest burden of infections and so to be able to control this we either have to get effective treatments or effective vaccines and the sort of work that we do is very basic science to try and understand how human beings respond to these infections and our work will be influential in terms of being able to identify relevant targets for vaccine development but more so our work also helps us to understand the sort of immune responses that people on this continent are generating because we know that the environment we are in may influence the sort of immune responses that you generate for example in the past you've had vaccines which have been very successful in developed settings being tested in the in less developed settings and they are not as effective or as efficient and by working within our context we are able to not only be able to identify relevant targets but also be able to deal with those other things that will be important to consider if we're going to have an intervention that is effective