Hannah Sharpe

I am a Wellcome Trust funded PhD student in the Emerging Pathogens Lab, supervised by Professor Teresa Lambe, Professor Paul Klenerman, and Professor Sarah Gilbert.

My research involves how cytomegalovirus (CMV), a common worldwide pathogen, affects vaccine efficacy. CMV has a seroprevalence of 30-50% in the UK but can reach nearly 100% seroprevalence in adults in Sub-Saharan Africa, and recent research has shown that infection with CMV reduces the efficacy of pandemic vaccines. I am interested in the impact that CMV infection has on the immune system in clinical and pre-clinical models, and how this ultimately changes vaccine response in human clinical trials.

Before starting my PhD, I did my undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences, and my Master’s degree in Integrated Immunology at the University of Oxford. During this time, I completed research projects on HIV vaccine development and Ebolavirus vaccine development.