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Melita Gordon

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Melita Gordon
Alma materUniversity of Oxford
Queen's University Belfast
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of Liverpool
Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust

Melita Alison Gordon CMG FRCP is a gastroenterologist who works on invasive gut pathogens and tropical gastrointestinal disease. She leads the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust Salmonella and Enterics Group. Gordon was awarded the British Society of Gastroenterology Sir Francis Avery Jones Research Medal in 2011.

Education and early career

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Gordon completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Cambridge. She completed her clinical qualifications at the University of Oxford and eventually specialised in internal medicine Queen's University Belfast. She has since worked in Zambia, Sheffield and Liverpool.[1] In 1993 she was awarded the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine Blacklock medal.[2] In 1997 she was appointed a Wellcome Trust Clinical Fellow and Lecturer.[3] She moved to Malawi in 1997, where she lived until 2005 and was part of the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust.[4]

Research

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In 2008 Gordon was made an NHS Higher Education Funding Council for England Clinical Fellow at the University of Liverpool. Her early work was the first to show how Salmonella becomes a lethal disease for HIV-positive people.[5] She was promoted to Reader in 2012 and Professor in 2015. In 2015 she returned to Malawi where she leads the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust Salmonella and Enterics Group.[6] Gordon's research focuses on the development of vaccinations to protect against invasive bloodstream diseases caused by two groups of Salmonellae; typhoid fever and Invasive Non-Typhoidal Salmonellosis (iNTS).[7] Gordon is committed to identifying novel vaccinations that can protect children in Africa from bacterial disease.

iNTS is a rare bacterial disease that is caused by extraintestinal infection of certain serotypes of Salmonella. iNTS kills around 80,000 people each year. It is more likely to occur in patients with HIV infection or malaria and the majority of people who suffer from iNTS are in Sub-Saharan Africa.[8] In 2011 Gordon was awarded the British Society of Gastroenterology Sir Francis Avery Jones Research Medal and in 2012 the Shire Awards for Gastrointestinal Excellence prize for Excellence in Gastroenterology.[9] She became Director of the World Gastroenterology Organisation Blantyre Training Center in 2016.[10]

In 2018 Gordon led Africa's launch of the new typhoid conjugate vaccine, and successfully vaccinated 24,000 children in Malawi in the first six months.[11] The first child, Golden Kondowe, received the first vaccination in Ndirande, Blantyre.[12][13] The Typhoid Vaccine Acceleration Consortium (TyVAC) study was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and was the result of twenty years of research of Salmonella in Malawi.[11][14] The vaccine, which contains the Vi antigen [15] (a part of the Salmonella Typhi bacterium that helps it cause disease), is expected to protect against typhoid and other infections.[16][17] She works with local scientists, health workers and the Malawi Ministry of Health.[11] The vaccine was shown to protect 81% of children from becoming infected with typhoid fever.[11]

Gordon and the University of Liverpool Centre for Global Vaccine Research were awarded a multi-million pound research grant to establish the Horizon 2020 Vacci-iNTS consortium.[18] The consortium looks to develop new vaccines and research the financial and social impact of iNTS on communities in Africa impacted by the disease.[18]

In 2019 Gordon was made a National Institute for Health Research Global Research Professor.[19] Her research has been supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust, British Society of Gastroenterology and Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.[20]

Selected publications

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Her publications include:

  • Gordon, Melita A. (2012). "Invasive non-typhoidal salmonella disease: an emerging and neglected tropical disease in Africa". The Lancet. 379 (9835): 2489–2499. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)61752-2. PMC 3402672. PMID 22587967.
  • Gordon, Melita A. (2008). "Epidemics of Invasive Salmonella enterica Serovar Enteritidis and S. enterica Serovar Typhimurium Infection Associated with Multidrug Resistance among Adults and Children in Malawi". Clinical Infectious Diseases. 46 (7): 963–969. doi:10.1086/529146. PMID 18444810.
  • Gordon, Melita A. (2008). "Salmonella infections in immunocompromised adults". Journal of Infection. 56 (6): 413–422. doi:10.1016/j.jinf.2008.03.012. PMID 18474400.

Personal life

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Gordon is married to Stephen Gordon, former Director of the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust Programme in Malawi.[21][22][23]

In the 2024 King's Birthday Honours, she was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) "for services to global health".[24]

References

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  1. ^ "CaT Steering Committee". Take on Typhoid. Retrieved 2019-12-09.
  2. ^ "Melita Gordon - University of Liverpool". www.liverpool.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
  3. ^ "Alumni - Wellcome Trust Liverpool Glasgow Centre for Global Health Research". www.liverpoolwttc.org.uk. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
  4. ^ "Malawi - Wellcome Trust". Yale School of Public Health. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
  5. ^ "How HIV Turns Food-poisoning Into Lethal Infection". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
  6. ^ "Melita Gordon". www.mlw.mw. Retrieved 2019-12-09.
  7. ^ www-core (webteam). "New types of African Salmonella associated with lethal infection". www.sanger.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
  8. ^ Stanaway, Jeffrey D.; Parisi, Andrea; Sarkar, Kaushik; Blacker, Brigette F.; Reiner, Robert C.; Hay, Simon I.; Nixon, Molly R.; Dolecek, Christiane; James, Spencer L.; Mokdad, Ali H.; Abebe, Getaneh (2019-12-01). "The global burden of non-typhoidal salmonella invasive disease: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017". The Lancet Infectious Diseases. 19 (12): 1312–1324. doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(19)30418-9. ISSN 1473-3099. PMC 6892270. PMID 31562022.
  9. ^ "National prize for gastroenterology team - Articles - School of Life Sciences - University of Liverpool". www.liverpool.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-12-09.
  10. ^ "Blantyre, Malawi | World Gastroenterology Organisation". www.worldgastroenterology.org. Retrieved 2019-12-09.
  11. ^ a b c d "First child vaccinated with typhoid conjugate vaccine in Africa - News - University of Liverpool". Retrieved 2019-12-09.
  12. ^ AfricaNews (2018-02-27). "Malawi is first African nation using new WHO approved typhoid vaccine". Africanews. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
  13. ^ "2018 News | University of Maryland School of Medicine". www.medschool.umaryland.edu. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
  14. ^ "Clinical Efficacy of Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine (Vi-TCV) Among Children Age 9 Months Through 12 Years in Blantyre, Malawi - ICH GCP - Clinical Trials Registry". ichgcp.net. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
  15. ^ Patel, Priyanka D.; Patel, Pratiksha; Liang, Yuanyuan; Meiring, James E.; Misiri, Theresa; Mwakiseghile, Felistas; Tracy, J. Kathleen; Masesa, Clemens; Msuku, Harrison; Banda, David; Mbewe, Maurice; Henrion, Marc; Adetunji, Fiyinfolu; Simiyu, Kenneth; Rotrosen, Elizabeth; Birkhold, Megan; Nampota, Nginache; Nyirenda, Osward M.; Kotloff, Karen; Gmeiner, Markus; Dube, Queen; Kawalazira, Gift; Laurens, Matthew B.; Heyderman, Robert S.; Gordon, Melita A.; Neuzil, Kathleen M.; TyVAC Malawi Team (2021). "Safety and Efficacy of a Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine in Malawian Children". New England Journal of Medicine. 385 (12): 1104–1115. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2035916. PMC 8202713. PMID 34525285.
  16. ^ "University of Liverpool - stream.liv.ac.uk - Video and audio streaming & sharing". stream.liv.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-12-09.
  17. ^ Typhoid vaccine may protect against other infections, retrieved 2019-12-13
  18. ^ a b "Liverpool partners in new African Salmonella vaccine project - News - University of Liverpool". Retrieved 2019-12-09.
  19. ^ "YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved 2019-12-13.
  20. ^ "Melita Gordon - University of Liverpool". www.liverpool.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
  21. ^ "MRC Declaration of Interest". MRC. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
  22. ^ "Drs Stephen and Melita Gordon – Malawi". St Brigid's Third World Group. 2018-08-20. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
  23. ^ https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/news-events/news/directorship-of-mlw
  24. ^ "No. 64423". The London Gazette (Supplement). 15 June 2024. p. B3.
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