Rebecca Strain

Becky Strain is a final-year PhD student supervised by Ellie Barnes and Paul Klenerman. She previously completed an integrated Master of Biology degree at the University of Oxford. Her PhD research focuses on the development of a pan-genotypic vaccine against hepatitis C virus (HCV). She has evaluated the ability of two HCV T cell immunogens to induce pan-genotypic T cell responses, work recently published in Hepatology. Building on this, she investigated the most promising candidate, a conserved-segment T cell vaccine, across multiple vaccine platforms using both homologous and heterologous prime–boost regimens, with the aim of identifying strategies that generate high-magnitude T cell responses. She is now exploring the immunological mechanisms underlying platform-specific differences in T cell responses, with a particular focus on MAIT cell activation following vaccination.