Epidemiology & Demography

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Dr. Charles Sande

Principal Investigator


Current Work

His research work has focused on pneumonia in children from low-income settings and well as in the development of vaccines against infections that cause pneumonia in children. Charles is particularly interested in characterising the molecular mechanisms that elevate the risk of severe disease and death in children with pneumonia, with the ultimate goal of devising innovative approaches to reduce the morbidity and mortality burden. His research team has in the last five years developed novel tools for characterising the respiratory proteomes of children with severe pneumonia and have exploited these tools to discover new mechanisms through which respiratory viruses enhance disease risk in children with pneumonia – for example, they were the first to describe an immunological phenomenon in the airways of children with pneumonia, whereby immunological responses that were initially triggered by respiratory virus infection, had an incidental effect in selectively remodeling the resident airway microbiota, and increasing niche opportunities for virus spread. Earlier in his career, Charles took a postdoctoral position at the department of Paediatrics at the University of Oxford, where he led a team of lab scientists in evaluating new adenovirus-vectored vaccines against Respiratory Syncytial Virus, which is the main cause of severe pneumonia in children.

Collaborations

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