Developing and Testing an Attenuated Tetravalent Vaccine Against Dengue

Date: 

Thursday, November 8, 2018, 1:05pm to 1:50pm

Location: 

GHP Building 1 Room 1208, Harvard School of Public Health

Speaker: Jorge Kalil, 2018-2019 CAPES Distinguished Visiting Professor, Harvard University; Professor and Head of Clinical Immunology and Allergy, University of Sao Paulo

There are over 300 million cases of dengue worldwide per year. Some are serious and even fatal. The disease burden occurs in tropical and subtropical areas, including Florida. There is no treatment and the licensed vaccine does not provide the proper protection. NIH, in collaboration with Brazilian institutions, has been developing a tetravalent attenuated dengue vaccine. Brazil is responsible for industrial and clinical development. Currently in phase 3 clinical trial, more than 17,000 volunteers have been recruited. The talk will present the scientific results.

Jorge Kalil M.D., Ph.D., is Professor and Head of the Clinical Immunology and Allergy Department at the School of Medicine, University of São Paulo. He is the coordinator of III - the National Institute of Science and Technology. Dr. Kalil received his Doctor of Sciences degree while working at the laboratory of Jean Dausset, who was awarded a Nobel prize for the discovery of HLA, in Paris. Kalil spent a sabbatical year as a Visiting Professor and Co-Director of the HLA laboratory, Department of Pathology, at the Stanford School of Medicine and he was an International Scholar at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His academic production registers more than 600 entries indexed by the Web of Science and more than 7,000 quotations. He is the holder of several patents. He was director of the Butantan Institute and President of IUIS – International Union of Immunological Societies. He studies the mechanisms of immune recognition and distinction of self and no self. He contributed to the understanding of T-cell allorecognition. He was a pioneer in the rethinking of antibodies and graft rejection and disfunction, and also described the mechanism of how microbes induce breakage of tolerance to self, leading to autoimmune diseases in humans. He is currently developing vaccines against Streptococcus, HIV, Dengue and Zika in advanced scientific stage.

For questions, please email Lindsey Goodwin