Anna Lacasta is a Senior Scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Anna is leading the vaccine development research on African swine fever (ASF) and East Coast fever (ECF) at ILRI, two of the most important livestock diseases currently endemic in LMICs. She manages several projects, among them a project to assess the performance of live attenuated vaccines (LAV) for African swine fever in the African context, the development of subunit vaccines, identification of immune correlates of protection and testing diagnostics for ASF. On ECF, she is focused on the development of subunit vaccines priming antibody responses against the parasite and the identification of immune correlates of protection. She is also investigating the mechanism of resistance wild animals have to diseases affecting livestock. Anna also has a long track record of training students in all stages of their careers, from undergraduates to PhDs. She is also a member of the ILRI Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), among other institutional roles.
Anna received her PhD in Environmental Microbiology and Biotechnology in 2013 from the Universitat de Barcelona (UB). Her PhD work was based on the identification of new antigens in the ASFV genome and the identification of the immune mechanisms involved in natural protection. Using her expertise in the field of vaccinology, Anna held a post-doctoral position at ILRI from 2013 working in a subunit vaccine against the sporozoite phase of T.parva parasite, the causative agent of ECF.
