Martha O'Kennedy

Martha
O'Kennedy

Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa, Principal Researcher
CSIR Next Generation Health cluster
Biography

Dr O’Kennedy is an employee at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa where she established a proficient technology platform to genetically enhance African cereal crops in her earlier career. In 2010, she joined the Biopharming research activities. Since then, Dr O’Kennedy teamed up with eminent scientist Prof Celia Abolnik (SARChI chair for poultry health and production, University of Pretoria) and Prof Yolandy Lemmer (CSIR Tuberculosis expert) and a few postgraduate students to successfully produce various Biopharmed VLP and antigen vaccines as well as diagnostic products. The team’s emphasis is on developing new generation safe, highly efficacious vaccines for optimal protection as they are based on the latest circulating strains. The vaccine products developed include low- and highly pathogenic H5 avian influenza, equine influenza, African horse sickness, Newcastle disease, gamma-coronavirus (causing Infectious bronchitis in chickens) and beta-coronavirus Covid-19 vaccines. The products developed since 2010 resulted in numerous publications, three patent applications, with the contribution of Masters, Doctoral and Postdoctoral students. Dr O’Kennedy was appointed as extraordinary lecturer at University of Pretoria (South Africa) since 2018 and runner up for the CSIR Career achievement award, November 2022. Both the plant-produced African horse sickness and Covid-19 vaccine studies were not only published in the Elsevier journal “VACCINE” in 2022 and 2023, respectively, with Dr O’Kennedy as first author, but also selected for oral presentations at the prestigious conference entitled: “Modern vaccines, adjuvants and delivery systems” in Copenhagen, Denmark, June 2023.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Martha-OKennedy

Research interests

Biopharmed vaccines for animal and human health.  Plant-produced virus-like particle (VLP) vaccines, Avian influenza, African horse sickness, Newcastle disease, Coronavirus vaccines.

Host species
Horses Poultry
Pathogen
Viruses VirusesAfrican horse sickness virus VirusesNewcastle disease virus