Yanran Zhao 49th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology 2021

Yanran Zhao

Yanran is a PhD student who just submitted her thesis working in cellular immunology at the Kirby Institute, a leading global research institution dedicated to the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. Her PhD research focuses on the development of novel methods for the detection and characterisation of human antigen-specific CD8 T memory stem cells in virus infections including hepatitis C virus and SARS-CoV-2. These immunological stem cells provide long-lasting protection following infection or immunisation. She has pioneered multiple T cell functional assays, and a novel T cell expansion technique, and have integrated these assays with the cutting edge self-developed technique of single cell isolation and sc-RNA sequencing to better understand the role of those virus-specific stem cells in long term immune protection. These methods are highly applicable for immunotherapeutic and prophylactic vaccine development against multiple infectious human viruses including hepatitis C virus, HIV, and SARS-CoV-2.