ProfessorChristopher Chiu

Chris Chiu is an Infectious Diseases physician and Immunologist. He underwent his basic medical training at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, undertook his PhD at Oxford and Imperial under a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Training fellowship and furthered his research with an MRC Clinician Scientist fellowship, including work with Rafi Ahmed at Emory Vaccine Center on antibody, B cell and T cell responses to influenza and varicella zoster virus vaccines.

His research interests focus on pathogenesis and protective immunity in human respiratory viral infections, including respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza and SARS-CoV-2. These are some of the most important causes of severe disease worldwide and there is an urgent need for improved vaccines and treatments for these pathogens. To discover why some people suffer life-threatening illness while others have only mild or asymptomatic infection, he has developed a set of unique experimental medicine techniques. He is an expert in controlled human infection (CHI) studies and leads a group that uses infection and vaccination of volunteers as well as patient-centred research to understand systemic and mucosal immunity against these infections. These highly specialised methods provide a unique opportunity to examine correlates and mechanisms of protection and disease severity in human beings. The group's work encompasses early phase clinical vaccine trials as well as fundamental studies of human immunity, which together enhance our understanding of how respiratory viral illnesses may be prevented and accelerate the development of better vaccines.

Prof Chiu also heads the international CEPI-HERA MusICC betacoronavirus CHI consortium and Imperial Network for Vaccine Research, which brings together investigators from across all faculties with an interest in vaccines. His group is part of a number of other international consortia, including the NIAID CIVICs programme and European Union IHI projects, and welcomes collaboration with researchers (both industry and academic) who wish to work together to pursue shared interests.