Summary
Dr Paul McKay is a senior researcher working within Professor Robin Shattock’s mucosal vaccinology team in the Department of Medicine. His primary research centres on the development of new vaccine candidates, the optimization of immunization regimens and the assessment of potential vaccine efficacy, with a particular focus on the generation of vaccine-induced immunity at the surface and within mucosal tissue.
Paul was awarded a B.Sc. (Hons) in Biochemistry from Imperial College, then a M.Sc. in Medical Immunology from The Royal Postgraduate Medical School (now the Hammersmith Campus of Imperial College, London) and finally a Ph.D. in Molecular Immunology, also from Imperial College. He then spent four years at Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston, USA, working for Professor Norman Letvin on the characterization of T cell responses to various vaccine modalities and the analysis, development and optimization of DNA prime and recombinant vector boost HIV vaccine candidates. He returned to the UK to work at St. George’s, University of London and was part of a successful application to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and The Wellcome Trust for a Grand Challenges for Global Health Initiative program grant to optimize vaginal vaccination against HIV infection.
Paul is currently involved in a number of research programs awarded to Professor Robin Shattock and funded by CHAVI, the Center for HIV AIDS Vaccine Immunology funded by NIH, the EUROPRISE Network of Excellence on Vaccines and Microbicides, the Bill and Melinda Gates Grand Challenges for Global Health ‘Novel Antigen Design and Delivery for Mucosal Protection Against HIV-1 Infection’ initiative. He also holds a Sir Joseph Hotung Senior Fellowship and is based at St. George’s, University of London and Imperial College, London. He lectures on vaccine design and development and on T cell and Dendritic Cell biology and has successfully supervised a number of M.Sc., M.Res and Ph.D. students.
Publications
Journals
Shattock RJ, Andrianaivoarimanana V, Mckay PF, et al., 2023, A self-amplifying RNA vaccine provides protection in a murine model of bubonic plague, Frontiers in Microbiology, Vol:14
Zhou J, Sukhova K, Peacock TP, et al., 2023, Omicron breakthrough infections in vaccinated or previously infected hamsters, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of Usa, Vol:120, ISSN:0027-8424
Siris S, Gladstone CA, Guo Y, et al., 2023, Increasing human monoclonal antibody cloning efficiency with whole-cell modified Immunoglobulin-Capture Assay (mICA), Frontiers in Immunology, Vol:14, ISSN:1664-3224, Pages:1-15
Tregoning JS, Stirling DC, Wang Z, et al., 2023, Formulation, inflammation, and RNA sensing impact the immunogenicity of self-amplifying RNA vaccines, Molecular Therapy : Nucleic Acids, Vol:31, ISSN:2162-2531, Pages:29-42
Thesis Dissertations
Barton RD, 2022, Self-Amplifying RNA Vaccine Development: Transcriptomic Profiling of a Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Virus Self-Amplifying RNA Vector in Human Muscle