Each year, the Lasker Foundation invites early career researchers to discuss big questions in biomedical research, with the aim of improving skills to communicate to a wide range of audiences. This year applicants were asked to 'Identify a specific unmet need in biomedical knowledge or a scientific question that is insufficiently addressed in biomedical research today'.
Dr Subashan Vadibeler, a recent Oxford Rhodes scholar and Department of Oncology student, who is supervised by Assoc. Prof. Eileen Parkes and Prof. Tim Elliott, was one of five winners this year, receiving a $5000 stipend and the publication of his essay in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Subshan's essay 'The (unresolved) antibody paradox' discusses why prior infection doesn't always result in immune protection against re-infection, and can even make reinfection worse (so-called 'antibody-dependent enhancement').