Claire-Anne Siegrist is Professor of Vaccinology and Pediatrics at the University of Geneva (Switzerland), Director of the Center of Vaccinology of the University Hospitals of Geneva, Director of the Center for Vaccinology and the Pediatric Department of the University of Geneva and Head of the WHO Collaborating Center for Vaccine Immunology. Past president of the Swiss Advisory Committee for Immunizations and current member of JCVI and WHO/SAGE, she has dedicated her professional life to vaccinology and public health. The quality and the objectivity of her engagement for the promotion of evidence-based vaccinology is recognized and appreciated worldwide.
After her training and board certification in paediatrics and infectious disease, she obtained an Advanced Immunology Diploma from Aix-Marseille II University (France) and initiated in 1994 a new research group on Vaccinology and Neonatal Immunology, recognized since 1996 as a WHO Collaborating Center. With her thesis on Vaccination in Early Life, she obtained her PD accreditation in 1998. She was nominated as Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Geneva in 1999. In 2005, she received the Bill Marshall Award from the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases.
Claire-Anne Siegrist has contributed to a large number of original scientific publications in the field of vaccine immunology, studying in particular the mechanisms that shape early life vaccine responses and how certain vulnerable populations respond to immunization. She is a member of several large collaborative projects including the High Impact project “Advanced Immunization Technologies” (ADITEC, www.aditecproject.eu) supported by EU DG Research and Innovation and the “TBVAC2020” project (http://horizon2020projects.com/sc-health/tb-consortium-awarded-e24m-international-grant/) supported by Horizon2020.
In September 2014, she was asked by the World Health Organization to be the Principal Investigator of the largest Phase I clinical trial assessing the safety and immunogenicity of the VSV-EBOV vaccine. The preliminary results of this trial were published within a few months:
- Medaglini D, Santoro F, Siegrist CA. Correlates of vaccine-induced protective immunity against Ebola virus disease. Semin Immunol. 2018 Jul 21. doi: 10.1016/j.smim.2018.07.003.
- Huttner A, Agnandji ST, Combescure C, Fernandes JF, Bache EB, Kabwende L, Ndungu FM, Brosnahan J, Monath TP, Lemaître B, Grillet S, Botto M, Engler O, Portmann J, Siegrist D, Bejon P, Silvera P, Kremsner P, Siegrist CA; VEBCON; VSV-EBOVAC; VSV-EBOPLUS Consortia. Determinants of antibody persistence across doses and continents after single-dose rVSV-ZEBOV vaccination for Ebola virus disease: an observational cohort study. Lancet Infect Dis. 2018 Jul;18(7):738-748. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(18)30165-8