Professor Philip Bejon

Professor of Tropical Medicine, Director of the Wellcome-KEMRIOxford Collaborative Research Programme, Group Head / PI, Consultant Physician and Unit Director, Kenya.

Dr. Bejon first came to Kilifi in 2002 to conduct Phase I and IIb clinical trials of a candidate malaria vaccine based on viral vectors. He returned to the University of Oxford in 2006 to complete specialist clinical training as a clinical lecturer, and then was appointed as a senior fellow in the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre. These posts allowed him to remain active in malaria research, leading further trials of GSK's candidate malaria vaccine "RTS,S", and as a member of the Malaria Vectored Vaccine Consortium funded to test viral vectored malaria vaccines in several sites in Africa including Kilifi. An MRC Clinician-Scientist Fellowship, allowed him to return to be resident full-time in Kilifi in 2013. He became Executive Director of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in September 2014. He has an interest in the evaluation of malaria vaccines in the field and work with GSK and with colleagues in the Jenner in Oxford on candidate malaria vaccines. His research focuses on determining the impact of heterogeneity of malaria transmission on vaccine efficacy, in examining correlates of protection, and the duration of efficacy. Other epidemiological interests include validating definitions of severe malaria, studies of naturally acquired immunity to malaria, bone infection and osteomyelitis, and over the last few years a developing interest in spatial epidemiology.

Publications