News
Cum laude PhD degree awarded to Sandra Abbo
On May 17th, 2022, PhD candidate Sandra Abbo graduated cum laude (top 3%) at Wageningen University with her PhD thesis entitled ‘Mosquito-borne viruses on the rise: the role of vectors, viromes and vaccines’. During her PhD research, Sandra studied the competence of indigenous and invasive mosquito species present in the Netherlands to experimentally transmit Zika virus and Usutu virus, two pathogenic arthropod-borne (arbo)viruses. She also characterised the collection of viruses (i.e., the virome) present in mosquito vectors. Besides her work on mosquitoes, she developed virus-like particle vaccines against the arboviruses Zika virus and Mayaro virus.
The Resource magazine published an article about the developed Zika and Mayaro virus-like particle vaccines, which can be found here: https://www.resource-online.nl/index.php/2022/06/23/vaccines-against-zika-and-mayaro-virus-being-developed/?lang=en