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KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN (KU Leuven)

Leuven, Belgium

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The KU Leuven is Belgium's largest university [ranked 42nd globally in 2023 in the Times Higher Education ranking] and leads the Reuters list of Europe's most innovative universities since 2016. The MVVD (Molecular Vaccinology & Vaccine Discovery) team of Prof. Kai Dallmeier (at the Rega Institute, KU Leuven) focuses on the development of vaccines for neglected and emerging pathogens such as Zika virus (Kum et al. Nature PJ Vaccines 2018), Ebola (Lemmens et al., NPJ Vaccines, 2023) and SARS-CoV-2 (Sanchez-Felipe et al. Nature 2020; Sharma et al. Nature Comms. 2022), using the live-attenuated yellow fever YF17D vaccine as vector. For that purpose, the team developed during the past 12 years a rich toolbox with direct application to this project. The scope of research spans from molecular understanding of the viruses targeted (Janssen et al. RNA Biology 2020), over modelling of viral pathogenesis in experimental animals (Boudewijns et al. Nat. Comms. 2020; Abdelnabi et al. EBioMedicine 2021; Ji et al. Emerging Infect Microbes 2021; Ji et al. EBioMedicine 2022) to the use of synthetic biology.

Project Team

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Prof. Dr. Kai Dallmeier

Kai studied Biology at the University of Bremen, after which he obtained a PhD degree at the University of Freiburg. After a short post-doc in the team of Prof. Michael Nassal, he joined the group of Prof. Johan Neyts at the Rega Institute of KU Leuven. As of 2022, he leads his own research team (i.e. MVVD: Molecular Vaccinology and Vaccine Discovery) as research associate professor. He is inventor of DNA vectored live-attenuated vaccines (WO/2014/174078) as basis for the PLLAV (plasmid-launched live-attenuated vaccine) vaccine platform technology and scientific co-founder of the KU Leuven spin-off company AstriVax which brings this technology to clinical development.

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Dr. Lotte Coelmont

Lotte is research and project manager in the teams of Prof. Kai Dallmeier and Prof. Johan Neyts, both at the Rega Institute, KU Leuven. Her responsibilities include business development, grant management, financial management and overall project oversight. Lotte holds a PhD in Virology (on hepatitis C virus) and a Master in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Leuven. She is co-founder of the spin-off company AstriVax.

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Dr. Yeranddy Aguiar Alpizar

Yeranddy is senior researcher in the team of Prof. Dallmeier with over 15 years of experience in academia. He has expertise in cell and molecular biology, immunology, neurology and oncology. He holds a Master in Biochemistry from the University of Havana, Cuba and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the KU Leuven. Yeranddy is involved in scientific discussions and feedback for the Yellow4FLAVI project.

Project tasks

Work Package 1: Influence of virus architecture on protective epitope exposure and antigen intracellular trafficking

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  • Task 1.4. Lead: Compare protection efficacy of different forms of YF17D vaccines in small animal models

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Work Package 2: Identification of host factors that predict and influence the vaccine response to YF17D

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  • Task 2.3. Quantification and serological characterisation of the vaccine response to YF17D in the collected cohorts

  • Task 2.4. Investigate host factors that predict and influence the vaccine response to YF17D

  • Task 2.5. Serologically characterise cohorts exposed to WNV and Usutu Virus

  • Task 2.6. Lead: Test factors hypothesised to influence the response to flaviviruses based on the analysed cohort data in animal models of flavivirus infection

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