MI2025 – Eng Eong Ooi

Title:
Piecing the puzzle of dengue immunity and pathogenesis

Abstract:
Despite the availability of licensed vaccines, dengue remains a global public health problem. In part, the burden of dengue on populations and health systems throughout the tropics is driven by uncertainty in the immune response to dengue virus infection. Whilst in some instances, the immune response protects against dengue and severe dengue, it can also in some instances exacerbate disease pathogenesis. Distinguishing the protective from the pathogenic immune responses and the underlying factors that differentiate such responses is thus critical for the world to understand how to deploy currently available but imperfect dengue vaccines. This presentation will piece together the different lines of evidence that collectively suggest that although imperfect, the vaccines that we have today can still make a difference to reducing the burden of dengue and severe dengue.

Biography:
Eng Eong Ooi trained in medicine at the University of Nottingham and completed his PhD studies on molecular epidemiology at the National University of Singapore. He has been conducting research on dengue and emerging viruses, including disease mechanisms and immunity, for more than 25 years. He is a three-time recipient of the Clinician-Scientist (Senior Investigator) Award and more recently, the recipient of the Singapore Translational Research Award, all from the National Medical Research Council of Singapore. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Science Translational Medicine and an Editorial Board member of PLoS Biology.