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Thursday March 20, 2025

Congratulations to Mee Ling Munier
2024 ASI Gordon Ada Travel Awardee

We warmly congratulate
Mee Ling Munier
winner of the 2024 ASI Gordon Ada Travel Award

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Supporting mid career ASI members who wish to travel for career related purposes

I am a Senior Research Fellow and group leader of the Vaccine Immunogenomics group within the Immunovirology and Pathogenesis Program at the Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney. The broad aim of my research is to understand and characterise the human immune response to vaccination and viral infection. 

We utilise the ultrasound-guided fine-needle biopsy (FNB) technique to sample human axillary lymph nodes following vaccination. This has allowed safe, longitudinal monitoring of vaccine responses within these critical secondary immune tissues which are the primary site of generation and regulation of antigen-specific immune responses. 

My group have applied this technique in the context of influenza vaccination (TRESAX study), allowing the ex vivo study of cells critical to the immune response, that never or rarely circulate in the peripheral blood: germinal centre T follicular helper (Tfh) cells and germinal centre B cells. Advanced high dimensional flow cytometry and single cell RNA-sequencing, allowed for detection of markers of memory, activation, proliferation, and circulation status of the cells at the protein and gene level (Law, 2022 [PMID: 35028536] and second manuscript submitted).

The roll out of the COVID-19 vaccinations in early 2021 allowed me to establish the COVAXIR study (funded by an NHMRC Ideas grant) - a globally unique study to investigate the primary and secondary immune responses to mRNA vaccination within human lymph nodes. As part of this study we investigated the potential impact of administering the second mRNA dose into the same or opposite arm as the first, addressing an important question that at the time hadn’t previously been given much attention.

Members of the Vaccine Immunogenomics Group (Left to Right), Mengfei Chen (PhD student), Alexandra Carey Hoppé (PhD student), Mollie Boyd (PhD student) and Mee Ling Munier.

I am very grateful to have been awarded the 2024 Gordon Ada Travel Award as it allowed me to attend the EMBO Workshop on Lymphatic Tissues and Germinal Centres in Immune Reactions (GCC) at the National University of Ireland in Galway, Ireland on the 3rd – 5th July 2024. It was a fantastic opportunity to present work from my group, I had a poster of the analysis of the single cell RNA-sequencing data from the TRESAX study and my PhD student Alex had a poster of her work on the COVAXIR study. It was really awesome to attend such a focussed meeting and a pleasure to meet so many like minded researchers. One of the highlights of the meeting had to be Ali Ellebedy thanking Alex and I for conducting the COVAXIR study to understand if administration of the second dose of mRNA vaccine in the same or opposite arm to the first changed vaccine efficacy!!  

The Gordon Ada Travel Award allowed me to include a side trip to Oxford University to meet and discuss collaborative projects with Prof Paul Klenerman (Nuffield Department of Medicine) and Dr Nick Provine (Pandemic Sciences Institute). Planning of these collaborative projects is now underway. As part of the side trip to England, I was also invited by Prof Robin Shattock to present my work at Imperial College London. I am extremely grateful to ASI to have been the recipient of this award and appreciate the opportunities it has given me to increase my international visibility.

Alex and I loved the EMBO Workshop posters so much that we needed a photo at the registration desk!

Author: Mee Ling Munier

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of ASI