Faith Osier: The key to a better malaria vaccine
費絲奧西: 更佳瘧疾疫苗的關鍵
Faith Osier is studying how humans acquire immunity to malaria and developing new malaria vaccines. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
in Africa every year,
about malaria vaccines.
are simply not good enough.
for 100 plus years.
一百年的時間在疫苗上。
of what the parasite really looked like.
蛋白質組學。
the parasite really is.
has remained pretty rudimentary.
we must go back to basics
我們必須要回到基礎，
handle this complexity.
如何處理這種複雜性。
infected with malaria
but they don't get ill.
who had overcome malaria
身上取得樣本來探究，
antibody response look like?"
看起來是什麼樣子的？」
on the radar for malaria vaccines.
被瘧疾疫苗注意到。
important parts of the parasite.
寄生蟲的某些重要部分。
a protein of interest,
感興趣的蛋白質被找出來時，
important for a vaccine
participants in a village in Africa,
一個村落中約三百位受試者，
would predict who got malaria
是否能用來預測
a small number of proteins
30 years of this type of research
conducted over just three months.
只花了三個月的時間進行。
組合一萬個樣本，
in seven African countries,
十五個不同地點，
and the variable intensity
to prioritize our parasite proteins,
the malaria parasite on a chip.
重建瘧疾寄生蟲。
and we're very proud of that.
我們感到非常驕傲。
on over 100 antibody responses.
antibody response,
what might make a good malaria vaccine.
用什麼能製造出好的瘧疾疫苗。
do to the parasite.
它們從多個角度攻擊嗎？
Is there synergy?
a bit of one antibody won't be enough.
concentrations of antibodies
kill the parasite in multiple ways,
多種方式殺死寄生蟲，
may not adequately reflect reality.
in greater definition,
更廣的定義來看待寄生蟲，
overcome this complexity.
the breakthroughs that we need
through vaccination.
are we actually to a malaria vaccine?
有多接近成功研發瘧疾疫苗？
at the beginning of a process
一個過程的開端，
what we need to put in the vaccine
在疫苗中加入什麼，
but we're getting there.
但我們在朝那裡前進。
費：而我們抱有希望。
tell me what does it stand for
它是什麼的縮寫？
Malaria Antigen Research Partnership.
is referring to us in Africa,
in collaboration,
and looking to Europe,
指望美國、指望歐洲，
some strength within Africa.
to develop a malaria vaccine,
of disease in Africa is high,
to push the boundaries
mentioned this a little bit,
你剛才有提到一點點，
if there were a malaria vaccine?
會帶來什麼改變？
half a million lives every year.
拯救五十萬人的性命。
12 billion US dollars a year.
費絲，非常謝謝你。
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Faith Osier - Infectious disease doctorFaith Osier is studying how humans acquire immunity to malaria and developing new malaria vaccines.
Why you should listen
Faith Osier works to understand how humans acquire immunity to malaria and intends to use this knowledge to design highly effective vaccines. Her studies focus on infections with the parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which leads to nearly half a million deaths in Africa each year. She demonstrated that Kenyan children who did not get sick after a malaria infection had high levels of antibodies against combinations of specific proteins found within the parasite. Subsequently, her studies in immune African adults revealed that there were in fact many additional parasite proteins that could be considered for malaria vaccines. To verify her results, she designed a massive study involving children and adults from 15 different geographical locations in Africa. She designed KILchip, a custom protein microarray that enabled her team to analyze antibody responses to more than 100 intentionally selected malaria proteins in these human blood samples. Her research group also studies the mechanisms by which these antibodies kill malaria parasites.
Osier is a Professor of Malaria Immunology in the Nuffield Deptartment of Medicine at the University of Oxford, UK. She has two research laboratories: one in the Biosciences Deptartment of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kilifi, Kenya, and the other in the Parasitology Deptartment of Heidelberg University Hospital in Heidelberg, Germany. She has won multiple awards for her work including the Royal Society Pfizer Award (UK) and the prestigious Sofja Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She holds major research grants from the Wellcome Trust, is an MRC African Research Leader and an EDCTP Senior Fellow. She is also a fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, an advisor to the Executive Committee of the Federation of African Immunological Societies and the vice-president/president-elect of the International Union of Immunological Societies. She was named a TED Fellow in 2018. She is passionate about training African scientists to excel and deliver the medical interventions that are urgently needed on the continent.
Faith Osier | Speaker | TED.com