Mar 5, 2021
With all
the talk and skepticism about vaccines, it is a great time to take
a sit back and evaluate the science of vaccines. Today, we have the
pleasure of learning from Natasha Duggan. Natasha is a virologist
whose work is centered around understanding antibodies for
potential HIV treatment.
In this episode, we discuss:
-Why vaccines work after virus mutation
-The clinical trial process and how the COVID-19 vaccine was rolled
out
-The types of vaccines, their structures, and how they are
studied
More about Natasha
Natasha was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and immigrated to The
United States at the age of 3 with her mother. She completed her
grade school education in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In her last
two years of high school, she participated in Project SEED where
she gained her first exposure to laboratory-based sciences
volunteering in a Biochemistry lab at The University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. After high school, she moved to San
Francisco, California, and received a B.A. in Psychology from the
University of San Francisco.
In college, she spent her summers working in an epigenetics
laboratory at Duke University examining environmental exposures and
DNA methylation. Following college, Natasha spent the next three
years working in a laboratory at the University of Virginia
studying angiogenesis in diabetic individuals.
Deciding to continue her education she moved to New Orleans and
attended Tulane University School of Public Health where she
received a Master of Science in Public Health with a focus in
Tropical Medicine. At Tulane, her work focused on examining and
identifying salivary proteins found in mosquitos infected with the
dengue virus. From here she went on to the University of Miami
where she is currently completing her Ph.D. in Cell Developmental
Biology. Her work focuses on isolating neutralizing antibodies
against HIV and SIV as potential tools for HIV vaccine
development.