Reflecting on my past 5-year professional experience

In my five years at Johns Hopkins University, I had risen from a trainee, a post-doctoral fellow, an assistant lab-manager, and finally to a faculty position as a Research Associate with The Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences.

However, before I switched to a wet-laboratory from a bioinformatics background, I had set my goal of publishing at least two first authors during my stint here.

Writing has been a difficult process for me. It takes a lot of mental discipline and emotional detachment to churn out a good article.

My first research paper took slightly more than a year to get it published. My second review paper had a shorter period of seven months, from mentally accepting the invitation to write for the journal to publishing it. I am happy on fulfilling my goal.

All said and done, I am grateful to my boss, Professor Thomas August for believing in my conviction and fellow colleagues in getting the papers published!

Highly conserved influenza A sequences as T cell epitopes-based vaccine targets to address the viral variability

Paul ThiamJoo Tan, Asif M. Khan and J. Thomas August

Volume 7, Issue 4
April 2011

Vaccines are the only proven effective method for prevention of human infectious diseases. Almost all traditional vaccines require activating immunological memory B cells to secrete neutralizing antibodies against invading pathogens. The complication with influenza viruses is the high viral mutation rate that results in immune escape through modification of the B cell epitopes. Studies of T cell immunity to influenza infection provide an alternative vaccine strategy based on highly conserved T cell epitopes. In this review, we discuss the importance of T cell-mediated immunity in influenza infection and the need for a targeted vaccine approach focused on highly conserved T cell epitopes to mitigate immune escape. We propose 15 highly conserved pan-influenza sequences as possible T cell epitopes-based vaccine targets for broad protection and lasting immunity against variant influenza strains.