Prof. Helen McShane is a Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Research Fellow and Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford. She is also a consultant HIV physician. Since 2001, she has led a research group focussed on mycobacterial immunity and the development of new vaccines for tuberculosis.
Her research programme involves design of candidate vaccines against TB, testing in various preclinical models, and extensive clinical testing through first-in-man clinical trials to field efficacy trials. MVA85A, one of the vaccines she developed, was the first subunit vaccine to undergo field efficacy testing since BCG. She collaborates with several research groups in Africa in the conduct of clinical trials including the South African TB Vaccine Initiative and the Clinical Infectious Diseases Research Institute, both at the University of Cape Town, Chu Le Dantec in Senegal and The MRC Laboratories in Uganda and The Gambia. Her current interests are in immuno-monitoring in clinical trials, the development of human mycobacterial challenge models and aerosol delivery of vaccines.
