Infectious disease expert to present Perey Lecture

Adrian Hill, an internationally recognized infectious disease expert from the University of Oxford, will present the 27th D.Y.E. Perey Lecture, the Faculty of Health Science’s oldest, fully-endowed premier lecture.

Titled, “Tropical infectious diseases: from innate immunity to candidate vaccines,” Dr. Hill’s talk will take place on Wednesday, April 25 from 9-10 a.m. in the Health Sciences Centre Rm. 1A1.

Hill trained at Trinity College Dublin and Oxford is now Professor of Human Genetics and Director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University. He leads research programs in genetic susceptibility to tropical infectious diseases and in vaccine design and development.

His laboratory at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics has identified susceptibility loci for many infectious diseases, mainly in African and Asian populations. These include susceptibility genes for tuberculosis, leprosy, pneumococcal disease and malaria.

His vaccine group at the Jenner Institute identified heterologous prime-boost immunisation using non-replicating vectors as an exceptionally potent approach for inducing protective T cell responses in murine malaria and undertook the first clinical trials of this vaccination strategy. A new tuberculosis vaccine from his laboratory is now the most advanced new TB vaccine in clinical development and he has also used new vectored vaccines to induce T cell mediated efficacy against the liver-stage of malaria in phase II trials.

He currently also chairs the Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine and the Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility in Oxford. He has published over 350 research papers. He is a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal College of Physicians and a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator.

Hill’s lecture and visit is supported by the McMaster Immunology Research Centre and Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster University. For those interested in meeting with Dr. Hill during his visit contact Marie Bailey at mbailey@mcmaster.ca