Dr Alex Spencer

Research

While traditional vaccination with heat-killed or attenuated vaccines has proved highly effective against pathogens controlled by neutralising antibodies, no vaccine has yet been licensed against pathogens in which cell mediated immunity plays an important role. Viral vaccines have shown a remarkable capacity to induce and boost T cells responses and are therefore the primary focus for our development of vaccines against malaria, influenza and tuberculosis.

The primary focus of my research is to understand the immune response induced by vectored vaccines and required for protection against malaria and influenza. In particular I am interested in the type of T cell response induced in terms of effector capacity (cytokines) and phenotype (effector/memory). I am interested in determining ways to increase the size of the immune response be that through altering vaccination regimes or through the co-expression of molecular adjuvants, such as classical co-stimulatory molecules and TLR molecules.

Key Publications

Alexandra J Spencer, Fergal Hill, Jared D Honeycutt, Matthew G Cottingham, Migena Bregu, Christine S Rollier, Julie Furze, Simon J Draper, Karen C Søgaard, Sarah C Gilbert,
David H Wyllie and Adrian VS Hill. Fusion of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigen 85A to an oligomerization domain enhances its immunogenicity in both mice and non-human primates (under revision)

Simon J. Draper, Sumi Biswas, Alexandra J. Spencer, Edmond J. Remarque, Stefania Capone, Mariarosaria Naddeo, Matthew D. J. Dicks, Bart W. Faber, Antonella Folgori, Alfredo Nicosia, Sarah C. Gilbert and Adrian V. S. Hill. Enhancing blood-stage malaria subunit vaccine immunogenicity in rhesus macaques by combining adenovirus, poxvirus, and protein-in-adjuvant vaccines. The Journal of Immunology. 2010 Dec 15;185(12):7583-95

Robert Alcock, Matthew G. Cottingham, Christine S. Rollier, Julie Furze, Samodh D. De Costa, Marian Hanlon, Alexandra J. Spencer, Jared D. Honeycutt, David H. Wyllie, Sarah C. Gilbert, Migena Bregu, and Adrian V. S. Hill. Long-term thermostabilization of live poxviral and adenoviral vaccine vectors at supraphysiological temperatures in carbohydrate glass. Science Translational Medicine. 2010 Feb 17;2(19):19ra12.

Karen Colbjørn Larsen, Alexandra J. Spencer, Anna L. Goodman, Ashley Gilchrist, Julie Furze, Christine S. Rollier, Endre Kiss-Toth, Sarah C. Gilbert, Migena Bregu, Elizabeth J. Soilleux, Adrian V.S. Hill and David H. Wyllie. Expression of tak1 and tram induces synergistic pro-inflammatory signalling and adjuvants DNA vaccines, Vaccine 2009 Sep18, 27(41):5589-5598

Matthew G. Cottingham, Rikke F. Andersen, Alexandra J. Spencer, Saroj Saurya, Julie Furze, Adrian V. S. Hill, Sarah C. Gilbert. Recombination-Mediated Genetic Engineering of a Bacterial Artificial Chromosome Clone of Modified Vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA), PLoS ONE. 2008 Feb 20;3(2):e1638