Andrew J. Pollard

Andrew J. Pollard is Professor of Paediatric Infection and Immunity in the Department of Paediatrics, and Director of the Oxford Vaccine Centre at Oxford University. He is an Honorary Consultant Paediatrician at Oxford Children’s Hospital, a Fellow of St Cross College and a Jenner Institute Investigator. He directs the largest paediatric vaccine clinical trials group in the UK, linked to his laboratory research group, which is located in the Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine. He also works on serogroup B meningococcal vaccine development (group B meningococcal infection is the leading infectious cause of death in early childhood in the UK) and with collaborators in Oxford, Manchester and at the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control, which is planning a phase 1 trial of a novel meningococcal vaccine.

In 2005, he established a research group at Patan Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, which studies vaccine preventable diseases in an urban setting in the country. The studies in Nepal highlighted the particular problem of typhoid in children. Professor Pollard has developed a bactericidal assay, which is being used to study population immunity in the country. In Oxford, in collaboration with the University of Maryland, the group is developing a typhoid challenge model to study pathogenesis of typhoid infection, examine the correlates of protection and evaluate new vaccines.

Professor Pollard is also the director of an annual 3-day course held in Oxford, 'Hot topics in Infection and Immunity in Children' (widely known as 'the Oxford Course'), which has become a major feature in the annual calendar of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Disease and attracts more than 200 delegates every year. Building on the success of this course, an Oxford University Postgraduate Diploma in Paediatric Infectious Disease was launched in 2008.

Professor Pollard obtained his medical degree at St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School, University of London in 1989 and trained in Paediatrics at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. He specialised in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at St Mary’s Hospital, London, and at British Columbia Children’s Hospital, Canada. He obtained his PhD at St Mary’s Hospital, London in 1999, studying immunity to Neisseria meningitidis in children, and proceeded to work on anti-bacterial innate immune responses in children in Canada before returning to his current position at the University of Oxford, in 2001. His publications include over 200 manuscripts and books.

Links:

• The Jenner Institute
• The Oxford Vaccine Group
• PG Diploma in Paediatric Infectious Disease
• Hot topics in Infection and Immunity in Children
• St Cross College