7th HIC-Vac Annual Meeting at Keble College, Oxford & Best poster prize winner, Millie!
On 29th and 30th September 2025, members of the Draper lab attended the 7th HIC-Vac Annual Meeting at Keble College, University of Oxford. It provided a fantastic opportunity to network with other HIC-Vac members from across the world and included a wide variety of talks about the role of controlled human infection studies in infectious diseases research. The meeting included sessions on human infection studies from the perspective of regulators, new horizons in human challenge, the role of challenge studies in understanding immunobiology, and human challenge studies in Malawi and Kenya.
Members of the Draper lab contributed to presentations during an inspiring couple of days. Prof Angela Minassian, Chief Investigator of malaria vaccine clinical trials and malaria challenge studies, chaired a session on New Developments in Human Challenge. Dr Andrew Duncan, Clinical Research Fellow, presented during this session on the development of a novel human challenge model for relapsing Plasmodium vivax malaria (BIO-006 study, OptiViVax consortium). The team were delighted be joined by two participants in the BIO-006 study who presented a poster about the participant experience. Dr Millie Gladstone, Postdoctoral Scientist, presented a poster on the development of a high-throughput multiplexed screen for the detection of antigen-specific human B cells following vaccination against malaria, work which has been supported through HIC-Vac pump-priming funding. This was awarded the overall prize for the best poster in a highly competitive field – well done Millie!
We are very grateful to the organisers of the annual meeting. Our group really appreciates and values the important network of HIC-Vac.
