| Katie Ewer | |
| Education: | PhD, Immunology, 2004, Open University |
| Thesis Title: | Relationships between tuberculosis exposure, ex vivo antigen-specific T cell responses, and delayed type hypersensitivity in point-source outbreaks. |
| Thesis Year: | 2004 |
| Workplaces: | University of Oxford |
Katie Jane Ewer is a British immunologist and Professor of Vaccine Immunology at the University of Oxford's Jenner Institute.[1]
When she did not get into medical school, Ewer pursued a career in biomedical science and became interested in infectious diseases.[2] She was interested in a career in biology for she was "fascinated by seemingly endless processes that occur in our cells and organs every second of our lives without us knowing about it.[3] Ewer earned an undergraduate degree in biomedical science, which included a year of microbiology training.[4] She then began working as a biomedical scientist at the microbiology department of the John Radcliffe Hospital in 2000,[5] before pursuing a PhD on the immunology of tuberculosis (TB).[4] Ewer earned her PhD at the Open University as a result of her research with Ajit Lalvani on novel diagnostic tools using T cells for the diagnosis of tuberculosis infection.[5]
Upon earning her PhD, Ewer joined the UK's Animal and Plant Health Agency where she studied the effectiveness of TB vaccines in cattle and managed the roll-out of interferon-gamma-based diagnosis for bovine TB in the UK herd for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.[5] While in this role, she co-published Diagnosis of tuberculosis in South African children with a T cell-based assay: a prospective cohort study with Susan Liebeschuetz.
In 2008, Ewer became a Senior Immunologist at Oxford University's Edward Jenner Institute for Vaccine Research.[5] While there, she continued to study the effects of TB on populations and led clinical trials in an effort to discover a vaccine for Ebola.[6] The aim of her research was to define vaccine-induced immunological parameters that correlate with protection from malaria and understand why vaccines do not always work as well as expected.[7] During the COVID-19 pandemic, she led clinical controlled trials in an effort to find a vaccine, which was published in a 2020 study titled Safety and immunogenicity of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2: a preliminary report of a phase 1/2, single-blind, randomised controlled trial.[8]