573 | Building Towards Next-Generation Vaccines for HIV

This week, MSc (PhD-intended!) candidate Alexander Gain talks about his research on modelling and testing immune responses to different HIV vaccines.

Although current treatments help keep the virus at bay, this requires people living with HIV to take anti-viral medication for the rest of their lives. Building a preventative vaccine could allow for people to experience a better quality of life, but requires a lot of tricky planning and overcoming experimental constraints.

How does one even start to design HIV vaccines that can hopefully work across different HIV variants? What sort of models can be used to examine the immune response following vaccination? What technical challenges exist before such questions can be properly tested, and how does one pace themselves better over such a marathon of a research endeavour?

Join Bruno Mesquita and Victor Lau as they hear more about Alex tackling a career path that aligns with his values, and for an episode that has both fun details and takes into account a larger picture.

To find out more about Alex and his research, please check out his labs!

https://artslab.ca/enter/ 

https://kerfootlab.com/

Recorded on Tuesday, September 29, 2026

Produced by Evelyn MacKay-Barr

Theme tune “Feelin Good” provided by FreeBeats.io (Produced by WhiteHot)