Session 3: Basic science shaping the future of HIV prevention: Innovations in HIV vaccine development

I am a Senior Program Officer on the HIV Vaccines team at the Gates Foundation.

I am a Senior Program Officer on the HIV Vaccines team at the Gates Foundation.

Ntando Yola is the Stakeholder and Community Engagement Lead at the University of Cape Town Clinical Trials Unit and the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation in Cape Town, and a co-founder of Advocates for Prevention of HIV in Africa (APHA). His extensive experience in HIV, TB, and related clinical research demonstrates his dedication to mobilizing diverse stakeholders and creating an enabling environment where they can play a meaningful role in health research and development. Through APHA, he further strengthens community-driven, collaborative empowerment and advocacy initiatives that directly address community needs in health research and development, thereby achieving lasting public health impact. He is a national leader at the South African National AIDS Council – Civil Society Forum in the Research Sector. Ntando has served on various national, regional, and international platforms as part of the collaborative collective in health research and development. He chairs the HIV Prevention Trials Network – Community Working Group. He has contributed to published literature on HIV, general health research, stakeholder engagement, and advocacy. 

Eunice Nduati is a Research Scientist and Group Lead at KWTRP. She is also the principal investigator for the Kenya SANTHE affiliate sites. Her research interests are in understanding host immune responses to infectious pathogens that are common in sub-Saharan Africa, with an overall aim of informing vaccine design. Her work focuses on HIV, to understand cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in the generation of HIV-specific functional antibodies, that may inform vaccine design. In addition, she is interested in assessing factors that may impact immune responses to vaccines in different populations and that may impact the development of an efficacious vaccine for the African region. Her group has established immunogenicity testing frameworks that are supporting the analysis of germline targeting HIV immunogens in early phase clinical trials implemented in Africa. Eunice also has a keen interest in enhancing scientific capacity and research ecosystems in Africa.

Dr. Caskey is a Professor of Clinical Investigation at The Rockefeller University. Her work focuses on the development and clinical evaluation of novel immunotherapeutic strategies against HIV, with a special emphasis on broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibodies.

Dr. Amelia Escolano is an Assistant Professor in the Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center at The Wistar Institute, a Wistar Institute Assistant Professor in Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania and the Co-Director of the Developmental Core of the Penn CFAR. Dr. Escolano received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Autonoma University of Madrid and the Spanish Cardiovascular Research Center (CNIC) in Spain where she investigated the role of Calcineurin in macrophage polarization and migration. For her postdoctoral studies, Dr. Escolano joined the laboratory of Dr. Michel Nussenzweig at The Rockefeller University in New York, where she worked on the development of novel sequential immunization strategies against HIV-1. These studies were recognized as one of the Notable Scientific Advances of 2016 by Nature Medicine. Dr. Escolano was awarded with a K99/R00 NIH Award in 2019 and recognized with the Blavatnik Regional Award as a finalist in 2020. She has been awarded with a NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, she is a Pew Biomedical Scholar and a member of the Kunkel Society. At The Wistar Institute, Dr. Escolano’s research is focused on understanding the humoral and cellular immune responses to vaccination and infection using HIV as a model and aiming to identify general guidelines for the design of efficacious vaccines and therapies against infectious diseases. 

I am a Senior Program Officer on the HIV Vaccines team at the Gates Foundation.

Dr. Caskey is a Professor of Clinical Investigation at The Rockefeller University. Her work focuses on the development and clinical evaluation of novel immunotherapeutic strategies against HIV, with a special emphasis on broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibodies.

Ntando Yola is the Stakeholder and Community Engagement Lead at the University of Cape Town Clinical Trials Unit and the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation in Cape Town, and a co-founder of Advocates for Prevention of HIV in Africa (APHA). His extensive experience in HIV, TB, and related clinical research demonstrates his dedication to mobilizing diverse stakeholders and creating an enabling environment where they can play a meaningful role in health research and development. Through APHA, he further strengthens community-driven, collaborative empowerment and advocacy initiatives that directly address community needs in health research and development, thereby achieving lasting public health impact. He is a national leader at the South African National AIDS Council – Civil Society Forum in the Research Sector. Ntando has served on various national, regional, and international platforms as part of the collaborative collective in health research and development. He chairs the HIV Prevention Trials Network – Community Working Group. He has contributed to published literature on HIV, general health research, stakeholder engagement, and advocacy. 

Eunice Nduati is a Research Scientist and Group Lead at KWTRP. She is also the principal investigator for the Kenya SANTHE affiliate sites. Her research interests are in understanding host immune responses to infectious pathogens that are common in sub-Saharan Africa, with an overall aim of informing vaccine design. Her work focuses on HIV, to understand cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in the generation of HIV-specific functional antibodies, that may inform vaccine design. In addition, she is interested in assessing factors that may impact immune responses to vaccines in different populations and that may impact the development of an efficacious vaccine for the African region. Her group has established immunogenicity testing frameworks that are supporting the analysis of germline targeting HIV immunogens in early phase clinical trials implemented in Africa. Eunice also has a keen interest in enhancing scientific capacity and research ecosystems in Africa.

Dr. Amelia Escolano is an Assistant Professor in the Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center at The Wistar Institute, a Wistar Institute Assistant Professor in Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania and the Co-Director of the Developmental Core of the Penn CFAR. Dr. Escolano received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Autonoma University of Madrid and the Spanish Cardiovascular Research Center (CNIC) in Spain where she investigated the role of Calcineurin in macrophage polarization and migration. For her postdoctoral studies, Dr. Escolano joined the laboratory of Dr. Michel Nussenzweig at The Rockefeller University in New York, where she worked on the development of novel sequential immunization strategies against HIV-1. These studies were recognized as one of the Notable Scientific Advances of 2016 by Nature Medicine. Dr. Escolano was awarded with a K99/R00 NIH Award in 2019 and recognized with the Blavatnik Regional Award as a finalist in 2020. She has been awarded with a NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, she is a Pew Biomedical Scholar and a member of the Kunkel Society. At The Wistar Institute, Dr. Escolano’s research is focused on understanding the humoral and cellular immune responses to vaccination and infection using HIV as a model and aiming to identify general guidelines for the design of efficacious vaccines and therapies against infectious diseases.