Nicola Ternette

Dr
Nicola
Ternette

Principal Investigator Antigen Discovery
University of Oxford
Biography

Dr. Ternette trained in Physics and Biochemistry at the Universities of Bonn, Greifswald and Bochum in Germany. Following her Masters graduation first in her class in Biochemistry in 2003, which was recognized with a price by the Ruth and Gert Massenberg-Foundation, she pursued my post-graduate studies in developing and evaluating DNA vaccines for Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) at the Institute for Molecular and Medical Virology in Bochum in the laboratory of Professor Klaus Überla. Following her PhD, I continued my research on viral infection using mass spectrometric methods supported by post-doctoral fellowships by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the German Research Society (DFG) at the University of Oxford with Professor Benedikt Kessler. She specialized in sequencing of HLA-associated peptidomes using nanoflow ultra-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS) with the focus on identification of viral antigens for the development of T cell vaccines. In 2015, she set up a specialized mass spectrometry facility at The Jenner Institute in collaboration with the Target Discovery Institute Mass Spectrometry Laboratory for the identification of HLA-ligands by LC-MS. Currently, the Immunopeptidomics facility has two state-of-the-art mass spectrometry platforms and the Ternette group has expanded their expertise to deep sequencing of immunopeptidomes in multiple pathogen infection models, analysis of the antigenic landscape of solid tumours and haematological cancers and characterisation of antigens involved in autoimmune diseases.

Research interests

Our research interests span from antigen discovery in cancer, to infectious disease and autoimmune disease.