Dr Martin Vordermeier
| Address: | Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency |
| Tel: | +44 (0)1932 357884 |
| Email: | |
| Website: | Bovine TB Vaccine Programme / External webpage |
Principal areas of research Vaccine development against bovine tuberculosis of cattle, biomarker discovery to define correlates of protection, ruminant TB immunology |
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Biography
Martin Vordermeier studied biology at the Universities of Stuttgart and Tuebingen (Germany) and obtained his doctorate in Microbiology in 1987 (Tuebingen) studying the interaction of bacterial compounds with B cells. He undertook post-doctoral training in Adelaide (Australia) investigating T cell responses in a murine Salmonella infection model. Since 1990 he worked on tuberculosis, initially on human tuberculosis until 1997 in the MRC TB and Related Infections Unit at Hammersmith Hospital, London, and since 1997 on bovine tuberculosis of ruminants at the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency.
Research
His current research interests are aimed at the investigation of immune responses against mycobacterial infections to support the development of vaccines and diagnostic reagents against bovine tuberculosis in cattle. His team are applying and testing a range of vaccine strategies including heterologous prime boost approaches using using virally vectored recombinant adenoviruses and Modified Vaccinia Virus Ankara-based vector systems. Part of this work is being undertaken in collaboration with the groups of Adrian Hill and Helen McShane at the Jenner Institute. For example, his team recently tested polyvalent virally vectored subunit vaccines for their protective efficacy in cattle and also compared the effects of mucosal and system delivery of recombinant adenoviral vaccines their immunogenicity in calves.
Supporting these objectives, his group is also engaged in the definition of immunological surrogates/predictors of protective and pathological immune responses through biomarker studies using, for example, genome-wide expression analysis of vaccine or infection-induced host responses. They recently identified a number of biomarkers that could support the ante-mortem diagnosis of bovine tuberculosis including Interleukin-22 and granzyme A. He is also interested in bovine TB in cattle in Africa, in particular the differences in the susceptibility to bovine tuberculosis between endogenous and exotic breeds in East Africa.
Key Publications
Vordermeier HM, Villarreal-Ramos B, Cockle PJ, McAulay M, Rhodes SG, Thacker T, Gilbert SC, McShane H, Hill AV, Xing Z, Hewinson RG (2009) Viral booster vaccines improve Mycobacterium bovis BCG-induced protection against bovine tuberculosis. Infect Immun 77 (8):3364-3373.
Ameni G, Vordermeier M, Aseffa A, Young DB, Hewinson RG (2010) Field evaluation of the efficacy of Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette-Guerin against bovine tuberculosis in neonatal calves in Ethiopia. Clin Vaccine Immunol 17 (10):1533-1538.10.1128/CVI.00222-10
Aranday Cortes E, Kaveh D, Nunez-Garcia J, Hogarth PJ, Vordermeier HM (2010) Mycobacterium bovis-BCG vaccination induces specific pulmonary transcriptome biosignatures in mice. PLoS One 5 (6):e11319.
Jones GJ, Gordon SV, Hewinson RG, Vordermeier HM (2010) Screening of predicted secreted antigens from Mycobacterium bovis reveals the immunodominance of the ESAT-6 protein family. Infect Immun 78 (3):1326-1332.
Jones GJ, Pirson C, Gideon HP, Wilkinson KA, Sherman DR, Wilkinson RJ, Hewinson RG, Lalvani A, Vordermeier HM (2011) Immune responses to the enduring hypoxic response antigen Rv0188 are preferentially detected in Mycobacterium bovis infected cattle with low pathology. PLoS One 6(6):e21371.
Aranday-Cortes E, Hogarth PJ, Kaveh DA, Whelan AO, Villarreal-Ramos B, (2012) Transcriptional Profiling of Disease-Induced Host Responses in Bovine Tuberculosis and the Identification of Potential Diagnostic Biomarkers. PLoS ONE 7(2): e30626.
