Ekta Mukhopadhyay

Ekta has been involved in infectious disease research for over 10 years working on adenoviral (ChAd63 and ChAdOx1) and Virus-like particle vaccines (R21) for diseases like malaria, HIV, influenza and zika. Her previous experience of working on process development, production and quality assessment of vaccines made her curious about pre-clinical vaccine development which she was able to study during her DPhil in Clinical Medicine at the Jenner Institute. She has been a part of the Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility team and was involved in process development and production of the first batch of the R21 vaccine for the Phase I clinical trial.

During her DPhil, she explored and assessed new malaria vaccine candidates for immunogenicity and efficacy with promising results to progress into clinical trials. She has also investigated into alternative vaccination strategies and surface glycans for malaria vaccination. During this time, she got an opportunity to be a part of the Oxford/AZ ChAdOx1 nCov-19 coronavirus vaccine and R21 vaccine clinical trials. After her DPhil, Ekta worked at the Kennedy institute of Rheumatology in Professor Fiona Powrie’s lab on oral vaccine platform with industry collaboration. In 2024, she joined Professor Alain Townsend group under Dr. Pramila Rijal and works on influenza vaccines exploring influenza immunology from both clinical and pre-clinical perspective. Along with vaccines, she is also works on Novo Nordisk funded anti-viral drug discovery project applying structural biology and fragment screening.