St Mary’s Infection & Immunity Seminars (hybrid)

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Biography – Prof Mariagrazia Pizza

Mariagrazia received her degree in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technologies at the University of Naples, Italy. After a period at the EMBO laboratories in Heidelberg, Germany, Mariagrazia moved to Siena, Italy, where she spent more than 30 years working on bacterial vaccines. During this time, she was initially the lead scientist in the discovery and development of the acellular pertussis vaccine based on a genetically detoxified toxin – a vaccine that showed 84% protection in a Phase 3 efficacy trial. Later, she was project leader of the “reverse vaccinology” approach to discover protective antigens of meningococcus B (MenB) from the bacterial genome. She led the MenB project through all phases of vaccine development, registration and post-marketing studies.  More recently, Mariagrazia was Senior Scientific Director for Bacterial Vaccines at GSK Vaccines and Head of Preclinical at GVGH, the GSK Vaccine Institute for Global Health, until December 2022.

She is currently Professor of Microbiology at Imperial College, London. She has received numerous awards, including the IVI- SK Bioscience Park MahnHoon Award 2023, and is an elected member of EMBO, the European Academy of Microbiology and the Academia Europaea, Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, Vice Chair of the Bacteriology Division of the IUMS (International Unit of Microbiology Societies) and member of the WHO Product Development for Vaccines Advisory Committee (PDVAC). She has over 250 publications in international peer-reviewed journals and is co-inventor on many patents.