Professor Tom Scriba named finalist for Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship Award

We are proud to announce that Professor Thomas Scriba is a finalist for the Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship Award. If successful he aims to identify new protein targets (antigens) that can be incorporated into novel tuberculosis (TB) vaccine candidates, with the ultimate goal of developing a long-lasting vaccine to protect against TB.  Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship Award finalist Professor Thomas Scriba wants to identify new protein targets (antigens) that can be incorporated into novel tuberculosis (TB) vaccine candidates, with the ultimate aim of developing a novel, long-lasting vaccine to protect people against tuberculosis (TB).

TB is an extremely significant global public health challenge that claims an estimated 1.3-million lives each year. South Africa is one of the World Health Organization’s 30 high-TB-burden countries.

Prof. Scriba is deputy director (immunology) at the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI). He wants to use the R3-million in funding that comes with the award to identify new protein targets (antigens) so that they can be incorporated into novel TB vaccine candidates. His team would do this by analysing lung and lymph node immune responses in people who are in the early stages of infection by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the bacterium that causes TB. 

Developing a vaccine that can prevent TB infection progressing into disease would be a worldwide public health game-changer, and the most effective way to improve TB control. “The only currently available vaccine, BCG, is only effective when given to newborn babies. Vaccine-induced immunity to protect against TB does not extend beyond childhood and BCG does not limit transmission of Mtb,” says Prof. Scriba in his application.

Furthermore, a poor understanding of the complex interactions between Mtb, its human host and the immune responses that are responsible for protection against TB, hinders the development of better vaccines, the professor says.

💉Prof. Scriba holds four patents – two for HIV vaccine candidates and two for TB prognostic biomarkers (a measurable biological characteristic used to estimate the likely course and outcome of a disease for an individual patient, independent of any specific treatment). He also has five patents pending, two for TB mRNA vaccine candidates and three for TB prognostic biomarkers. An mRNA vaccine “teaches” an individual’s cells how to make a harmless protein or a piece of a protein to trigger an immune response and build antibodies.

If he wins the award, Prof. Scriba will be able to do the proposed work by leveraging a “unique and extremely powerful research platform” that enables access to and investigation of human tissues to achieve his goal of identifying new antigens that can be incorporated into novel TB vaccine candidates. Importantly, his teams’ investigations would be conducted on human tissue, which will make developing appropriate vaccines more efficient. 

📌Prof. Scriba is a professor in immunology at the University of Cape Town and joint principal investigator of the Immune Correlates Consortium, a prominent international research collective funded by the Gates Medical Research Institute, the United States National Institutes of Health and the Gates Foundation