Faculty & Staff

Prof. Annapurna Vyakarnam holds a dual academic affiliation: Professor of Microbial Immunology at King’s College London and Adjunct Professor at St. John’s Research Institute, India, where she heads the Human Immunology Laboratory within the Division of Infectious Diseases, which is led by Professor M. Dias

Qualification: BSc Hons (Pune University, India); MSc (Uni. London, UK); PhD (Cambridge University, UK).

Email: annapurna.2.vyakarnam@kcl.ac.uk, annapurna.v@sjri.res.in

Dr Vyakarnam’s laboratory focuses on the immunology of acute and persistent respiratory infections that pose global health challenges in adults, infants and the vulnerable (the elderly, subjects with type 2 diabetes and with defined cardiovascular risk) to understand how and why the immune response changes in subjects who fall into these vulnerable categories. Her laboratory uses cellular, molecular, immunological, and functional genomic approaches to conduct an in-depth functional analysis of innate and adaptive immune responses in primary clinical samples. In the past nine years she has set up an active wet laboratory research programme with colleagues at St John’s Research Institute, Bangalore, India, focussed on longitudinal human immune profiling studies using an integrated systems approach to understand heterogeneity, persistence and linked T cell receptor diversity of pathogen-specific immune responses to SARS-CoV-2, influenza, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) (with and without HIV coinfection) during the symptomatic infection phase, recovery phase, contextualised with immune responses induced by current and emerging vaccines to the same pathogens in healthy and potentially immunocompromised subjects.  

An important focus of her laboratory is to understand mechanisms of immune training, which is vital for both innate and adaptive immune defence using Bacillus Calmette Guerin (BCG) as a modulating tool. Her laboratory has published extensively on how BCG revaccination through chromatin remodelling can be used as a tool to diversify pathogen-directed innate and heterologous adaptive responses to influenza and SARS-CoV-2 vaccines as part of a wider strategy to combat infections of global health importance. Dr Vyakarnam’s laboratory is also elucidating mechanistic pathways linked to newborn immunity and how these can be enhanced through BCG vaccination at birth combined with correcting profound vitamin D deficiency of the mother, through supplementation.

More recently her laboratory has initiated translational studies on T-cell therapy with colleagues, with the aim of reversing disease in the immunocompromised caused by opportunistic microbes due to holes in the T cell repertoire. Her laboratory is engaged in setting up detailed protocols to expand T cells specific to a panel of common viruses and to use systems approaches to characterise the expanded T-cells, as a basis for such cells being used as a therapeutic.

Dr Vyakarnam’s funding support comes from the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) India; Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), India; MRC UKRI UK International funding; DBT India - MRC UK Joint COVID19 Funding; Wellcome Trust UK International Collaborative Grant Funding; DBT India - NIH USA Joint International funding; Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Govt. India support from Hindustan Unilever Ltd, India and the European Union (EU) - DBT joint International funding.

Key collaborators with joint grants and publications in the past 5  years

• Prof. Tom H. Ottenoff: Infectious Diseases, Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden University, The Netherlands
• Dr Simone A. Joosten: Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden University, The Netherlands
• Prof. Mihai Netea: Department of Immunology and Metabolism, Radbound University, The Netherlands
• Prof. Gagandeep Kang: Christian Medical Centre, Vellore, India
• Prof. Satyajit Mayor: National Centre of Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India
• Prof. L.S. Sashidhara: National Centre of Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India
• Prof. Catherine Hawrylowicz: School of Immunology and Microbial Sciences, King’s College London, London, UK
• Prof. Adrian Hayday: Department of Immunobiology, King’s College London, London, UK
• Prof. Stuart Neil: Department of Infectious Diseases, King’s College London, London, UK
• Prof. Ajay Shah: School of Cardiovascular Medicine & Sciences, King’s College London, London, UK
• Prof. Philip Chowienczyk: School of Cardiovascular Medicine & Sciences, King’s College London, London, UK
• Prof. Michael M. Malim: Department of Infectious Diseases, King’s College London, UK
• Prof. Wendy Barclay: Department of Infectious Diseases, Imperial College, London, UK
• Prof. Amit Singh: Centre for Infectious Disease Research, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
• Dr. Sudha Rao (Industry collaborator): Genotypic Technology Pvt Ltd, Bangalore, India
• Prof. George D’Souza: St. John’s Medical College and Hospital, Bangalore, India
• Dr Mary Dias: Department of Microbiology, St. John’s Research Institute, Bangalore, India
• Dr Pratibha Dwarkanath: Division of Nutrition, St. John’s Medical College and Hospital, Bangalore, India
• Prof. Stephen D’Rosa: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre, Seattle, Washington, 
• Prof. Julie McElrath: University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington
• Prof. Rajiv Khanna: Tumour Immunology Laboratory, Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Australia
• Prof. Alok Srivastava: Department of Clinical Haematology, St. John’s Research Institute, India

Laboratory Members and Capacity Building in Human Immunology

Current Staff:

Dr Asma Ahmed, Assistant Professor, Immunologist (DBT-BioCare Fellowship)

Mr Vasista Adiga, Project Scientist C and PhD student (Wellcome Trust award); Immunologist

Dr Sujitha Mary, Postdoctoral Research Assistant (Wellcome Trust award); Senior Bioinformatician

Dr Kiran B. K., Research Associate III (DBT-EU Award); Immunology

Ms Nirutha Chetan Kumar, Senior Project Associate, PhD student (Wellcome Trust award); Immunology

Ms Umalasya Hande, Senior Project Associate (DBT-EU Award); Molecular Immunology

Ms Bhavyashree N., Project Associate I (DBT-EU Award); Immunology

Ms Deekshitha M., Project Associate I (Wellcome Trust award); Microbiology

Recent Alumni: 

Dr Himanshu Tripathi: Currently working in ExcelRa (Data Infrastructure and Analytics)

Dr Srabanti Rakshit: Currently works as a Consultant, Tata Institute of Genetics and Society, National Centre for Biological Sciences, India.

Ms Hima Bindhu: Currently works as a Specialist, Q-Gen Cell Therapeutics at Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Australia.

Dr Arunachalam Ramaiah: Currently works as a Director of Bioinformatics & Pathogen Genomics Centre of Excellence at the Georgia Department of Public Health, United States.

Open Positions

Actively recruiting for a Senior Immunologist post. 

We are looking for a highly motivated immunologist to join our team (either recently completed their doctoral training in immunology or with experience) with interests in understanding the nature of immune responses during the course of natural respiratory tract infections and post-vaccination. We are interested to hear from individuals who have worked on either B-cells, T-cells or innate cell responses in animal models and/or human systems. Those interested, please write to Prof. Vyakarnam (annpurna.v@sjri.res.in) with a CV and a brief statement of research interests.