The presence of competing events, such as death, makes it challenging to define causal effects on recurrent outcomes. In this thesis, I formalize causal inference for recurrent events, with and without competing events. I define several causal estimands an ...
Recent advances in the field of nanomaterials demonstrated how their use for vaccination can drastically improve immune responses, mainly by enhancing delivery and uptake of vaccine components. However, our understanding of the connections between presenta ...
Adjuvant is an essential component in subunit vaccines. Many agonists of pathogen recognition receptors have been developed as potent adjuvants to optimize the immunogenicity and efficacy of vaccines. Recently discovered cyclic GMP-AMP synthase-stimulator ...
The current COVID-19 pandemic has showed the threats that viruses can cause to the whole world. Over 200 million infections and over 4.5 million deaths and enormous socio-economic impact were the output of the emergence of a single new pathogen: SARS-CoV-2 ...
Background: In England, coverage for childhood vaccines have decreased since 2012/13 in the context of an increasingly visible anti-vaccination discourse. We determined whether anti-vaccination sentiment is the likely cause of this decline in coverage. Met ...
High-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) are responsible for genital and oral cancers associated with the expression of the E6/E7 HPV oncogenes. Therapeutic vaccines targeting those oncogenes can only partially control tumor progression, highlighting the neces ...
Vaccines currently represent one of the most effective means to control and prevent infectious diseases affecting humans and animals and have dramatically improved public health, quality of life, and life expectancy. Over the last years several conceptual ...
Results from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) help determine vaccination strategies and related public health policies. However, defining and identifying estimands that can guide policies in infectious disease settings is difficult, even in an RCT. The ...
High-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) encoding E6/E7-HPV oncogenes are responsible for a subgroup of head and neck squamous-cell carcinoma (HNSCC) and thus therapeutic E7-vaccines may be used to control HPV+HNSCC tumors. Herein we investigated the effects o ...
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world and melanoma is the deadliest type of skin cancer. Although surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are still standard treatments, the discovery of the role played by the immune system in cancer has a ...
