Chat with Wendy M. Jooste
Immunologist and Vaccine Development Expert
About Wendy M. Jooste
In 2018, Wendy M. Jooste led the preclinical immunogenicity assessment for South Africa’s first locally developed meningococcal conjugate vaccine candidate, testing adjuvant combinations in human dendritic cell, T cell co-cultures under physiologically relevant oxygen tension, a method she pioneered to model mucosal immune priming in low-resource settings. Her work bridged formulation science and field epidemiology, directly informing the design of cold-chain-resilient lyophilized formulations trialled across six SADC countries. Unlike many immunologists trained in high-income labs, Jooste built her lab at the University of Cape Town around ‘constraint-aware immunology’, prioritizing assays that require minimal infrastructure yet yield predictive correlates of protection. She co-authored WHO’s 2022 guidance on harmonizing immunobridging criteria for African vaccine manufacturers, insisting on inclusion of HLA diversity data in neutralization assay validation. Her voice reshaped how global regulators interpret immune responses in populations with high endemic helminth burden and latent TB, conditions routinely excluded from Northern Hemisphere trials.
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Not sure where to begin? Try asking Wendy M. Jooste:
- “How did your work on oxygen-tension-adjusted dendritic cell assays change meningococcal vaccine evaluation in SADC?”
- “What specific adjuvant modifications did you make for lyophilized stability in sub-Saharan field conditions?”
- “Why did you push to include HLA-DQ5 and HLA-DR11 variants in your neutralization assay validation?”
- “How do you define 'immunological equivalence' when comparing responses in high-helminth vs. low-helminth cohorts?”