HIC-Vac Annual Meeting 2022
Human Infection Challenge in the Pandemic Era and Beyond
De Vere Horsley Estate
HIC-Vac (Homepage | Hic Vac (hic-vac.org)) is an international network of researchers who are developing human infection challenge (HIC) studies to accelerate the development of vaccines against pathogens of high global impact.
Early November 2022, Sarah was invited to present work from the EDCTP-funded Multi-stage Malaria Vaccine Consortium on the establishment of the blood-stage controlled human malaria infection (CHMI) model in a malaria endemic setting for the first time at the HIC-Vac annual meeting in Guildford, UK.
This year’s meeting focus was on human infection challenge in the pandemic era and beyond. Sarah’s talk entitled “Technology transfer of blood-stage malaria CHIM: from UK to Tanzania” detailed the setup, conduct and outcomes of the first blood-stage CHMI conducted in Africa earlier this year. This project, called VAC083, focused on capacity building with the group’s long-term collaborators at Ifakara Health Institute led by Dr Ally Olotu, and training the team to thaw and prepare cryopreserved Plasmodium falciparum for direct intravenous injection into participants, as well as monitoring parasitemia in real-time before initiating treatment when pre-determined thresholds for diagnosis/end of study were met.
A number of the group’s clinical team, including Melanie, Angela, Mimi, Jo and Dimitra, also attended the meeting and there were many valuable discussions with experts conducting challenge studies across the globe.
