London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

A 5-day workshop from 19th to 23rd of February 2018 on systems immunology and bioinformatics was held at MRC Unit The Gambia at LSHTM Fajara main site. The main aim of the training workshop is to build capability and capacity for analysis of human transcriptomic datasets (e.g. microarray, RNAseq) in The Unit, generated in vaccinology and immunology studies. The course was coordinated locally by Dr Thushan de Silva, a principal investigator and visiting scientist within the Vaccines and Immunity Theme at MRC Unit The Gambia at LSHTM.
The participants were trained on the principles of systems biology as applied to immunology, basics of data pre-processing, quality control and normalisation and on familiarisation with online tools and databases used in systems immunology studies. The training was led by Dr Helder Nakaya from the University of Sao Paulo and Dr Myrsini Kaforou from Imperial College London, with support from Dr. Saikou Bah, Dr David Jeffries and Dr Abdul Karim Sesay of MRC Unit The Gambia at LSHTM.

Professor Beate Kampmann, Theme Leader Vaccines and Immunity, presented the opening of the course.

All aspects of the course, including international travel for instructors, was fully funded by an Imperial- Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) Global Engagement Scheme (SPRINT) that was awarded to Dr. Thushan de Silva and Dr. Helder Nakaya.

 The key outcome of the training was that participants gained an insight into how to apply systems biology approaches to answer questions in immunological studies.