By Dr. Pearce

We were delighted to welcome students from Twyford CofE High School, Elthorne Park High School, Wimbledon High School GDST, Oxford High School GDST and Harrow School to the first ever NHEHS Infectious Disease Conference for Schools yesterday.

When the idea of a conference was first discussed last year, COVID-19 was still a bad cold for bats and we were very much looking forward to inviting students from other schools into ours to hear from the speakers.  In some ways the pandemic enabled us to invite more than we had hoped for and we were very happy to welcome students from across the country.

We heard from five excellent speakers:

Dr. Martin Cohn, a Medical Doctor who graduated from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. He has worked at Imperial College London as a Clinical Research Fellow and Research Study Lead across fields such as Alzheimer’s disease and eHealth for Public Health. His main research interests explore the use of technology for the prevention, early recognition, and treatment of diseases.  Dr. Cohn spoke about the use of a mobile phone app that could be used to track the location of the mosquito vector of Dengue virus, demonstrating a useful tool for communities to identify hotspots to tackle with disease control interventions.

Miss Andrea Majstorovic, a PhD student at Imperial College, London whose research interests lie at the intersection of microbiology and biotechnology. She works in the laboratory of Dr. Julien Vaubourgeix, investigating the role of polyphosphate in the mycobacterial response to stress, including in the ability of mycobacteria to survive lethal concentrations of antibiotics. Ms Majastorovic introduced the concept of phenotypic antimicrobial resistance, where the TB bacterium hides away from the drug by essentially going to sleep for a while.

Dr. Leah Frenette is a Postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London where she works with Professor Molly Stevens developing of new strategies for diagnosis at the point of care.  Dr. Frenette has a PhD in Chemistry and specialises in fluorescent and catalytic nanoparticles. Dr. Frenette’s fascinating talk updated us on progress towards a diagnostic test for COVID-19 and some of the challenges they have faced working with samples of the virus.

Dr. Fadil Bidmos is a MRC Career Development Fellow, at Imperial College, London.  His research has focused on the areas of phase variation of bacterial surface antigens, meningococcal carriage studies and preclinical vaccine development. His current interests are in the development of cost-effective bacterial vaccines using advanced approaches such as Reverse Vaccinology 2.0 and in vivo glycoengineering. Dr. Bidmos reminded us of the dangers of meningitis, particularly among freshers at university, but also the progress being made in developing a vaccine.

Professor Cally Roper is a Professor in Malarial Genetics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her research applies evolutionary genetics to practical problems in malaria control. In particular, she is interested in the emergence and spread of antimalarial drug resistance. Her research involves mapping resistance mutations in Africa to inform policy on malaria prevention and treatment, and the development of new molecular tools for mapping the dispersal of resistance mutations.  Professor Roper’s talk asked a question of us: it is likely that screening for coronavirus will be introduced at airports, so could we  persuade governments that screening (and treatment) for malaria could be done at the same time in order to prevent the spread of antimalarial drug resistance?

 Thank you to each of the speakers for their time and giving us an insight into their fascinating research, and to each of the schools for joining us online.