Vaccine Clinical Development:
Key Ingredients to Improve Efficiency

Dr. Lisa Kierstead received her PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center of the Pennsylvania State University with a focus on the cellular T lymphocyte responses to infection with herpes simplex virus types 1 and 2. Dr. Kierstead joined the business in 2009 as Associate Director and is currently Executive Director of the Vaccine Sciences Department. She works with Business Development to interact with clients and grow the business including the Suzhou  vaccines sciences lab. Dr. Kierstead has experience working with clients to move vaccine candidates through the clinical development pipeline, including regulatory submission. Her 23 years of experience spans infectious disease and oncology, including: dengue, norovirus, pneumococcus, meningococcus and melanoma. Before joining the business, Dr. Kierstead was a Research Fellow at Merck Research Laboratories in Vaccines and Biologics.

Dr. Vanessa Elharrar has 17+ years of experience in vaccines and HIV prevention clinical research. Dr. Elharrar is Vice President, Vaccines Business Strategy Lead, PPD clinical research business. Dr. Elharrar joined the business in 2016 with more than eleven years of experience at the National Institutes of Health where she served as a Medical Officer, Deputy Branch Chief and Director of HIV therapeutics research at the Office of AIDS Research. Dr. Elharrar holds a Bachelor of Science in Physiology from McGill University, a medical degree from Indiana University School of Medicine, and completed her residency in Preventive Medicine along with a Master’s in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

Atul Chaudhari completed his Veterinary Graduation (B.V.Sc. & A.H.) from Bombay Veterinary College, Mumbai, India in 2004 and received his PhD in Veterinary Medicine (Microbiology and Immunology, Public health) from Chonbuk National University, Jeonju, South Korea in 2010. Atul’s research during his PhD mainly focused on vaccine development targeting pathogens causing zoonotic diseases using recombinant DNA technology and Atul has 15 years of experience in the field of vaccine development, immunoassays, nanotechnology and regenerative medicine.

Atul currently works as a Manager, Labs, R & D at Vaccine Sciences department at PPD, Thermo Fisher Scientific. As R & D manager, Atul leads lab activities mainly focusing around development, qualification and validation of microneutralization assays as well as ligand binding assays. Atul’s current role is focused on providing scientific support to lead the technical discussions for clients on assay development and validation.