Yaw Bediako
- Oct 6, 2021
Yaw Bediako, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Yemaachi Biotech and researcher at the West African Centre for Cell Biology and Infectious Pathogens in Ghana, will bring together African biotech and academia with the Francis Crick Institute to provide important insights into how vaccines can be designed to work more optimally among African people. The African continent has the highest infectious disease burden in the world but almost no capacity for vaccine development or testing. Instead, most vaccines are tested in healthy Caucasian adults in high income countries, and many have lower efficacy among African populations. Dr. Bediako studies immune function in African populations and is devoted to building research capacity in Africa. He developed and successfully deployed the first national SARS-CoV-2 variant tracker on the continent, which displayed the distribution of viral variants in real-time. He will perform a prospective cohort study, and use molecular, cellular, and data-analysis approaches to investigate if the cellular and humoral immune responses to the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine differ between Ghanaian and UK populations, and identify the effect of host genetic diversity on vaccine response. These data will support more rational vaccine design among African populations.
More information about Calestous Juma Science Leadership Fellowship
Explore More Calestous Juma Science Leadership Fellowship
Abdoulaye Djimde
Oct 6, 2021Anita Ghansah
Oct 6, 2021Annettee Nakimuli
Oct 6, 2021