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Yiakon Sein

SANTHE Masters Fellow


KEMRI/Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) Kilifi, Kenya

African Collaboration for Innovation in HIV/TB Prevention (ACP-HIV/TB) Fellowship Recipient

Project

Determining the diversity of the naive B cell repertoire in African (Kenyan) population

Collaboration Interests
  • Molecular immunology of HIV
  • Surveillance of HIV within Africa
Supervisor
Eunice Nduati

Yiakon Sein holds a BSc in Medical Laboratory Science from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) in Juja, Kenya. He is interested in understanding the human immune response to infectious diseases and applying novel technologies to support evidence-based approaches to epidemic control.

His research interests focus on HIV immunology, particularly the mechanisms by which the virus evades host immune responses, with the goal of informing the design of prophylactic and therapeutic vaccine strategies.

He is currently working to characterise the naïve B cell repertoire in African populations. This work aims to define region-specific immunoglobulin allelic variants and improve the representation of African immune diversity in global reference databases, ultimately supporting more effective and inclusive vaccine design.

Publications
Coordinated Fc-effector and neutralization functions in HIV-infected children define a window of opportunity for HIV vaccination An optimization of four SARS-CoV-2 qRT-PCR assays in a Kenyan laboratory to support the national COVID-19 rapid response teams Maintaining laboratory quality assurance and safety in a pandemic: Experiences from the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme laboratory’s COVID-19 response

SANTHE is an Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) flagship programme funded by the Science for Africa Foundation through the DELTAS Africa programme; the Gates Foundation; Gilead Sciences Inc.; and the Ragon Institute of Mass General, MIT, and Harvard.

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