Not every vaccine is the same
An invitation to an exclusive discussion between scientists and practitioners on a topical subject.
Date: Wednesday 13 January 2021 at 5:00 p.m.
Scientists have done good work; they have found out a great deal about the Covid-19 virus and developed the first vaccines. Now we are entering the phase of putting these discoveries to practical use. Five vaccines are already available. What are the differences between them and how effective are they? How long do they work and which group of people is each suitable for? When can I have a booster? Can I mix vaccines? If the virus mutates, is a vaccine against the original virus effective? Logistics and finance are an important part of the whole chain. We will try to focus on that too in our debate.
The panellists:
Václav Hořejší
Prof. RNDr. Václav Hořejší, CSc. is the most cited Czech immunologist and the discoverer of new molecules important for the activation and regulation of the effector functions of white blood cells, specifically T-lymphocytes. He is among the first immunologists to formulate the hypothesis of so-called membrane lipid rafts, which significantly influenced research into the function of membrane structures and molecules in cell activation. He works at the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Ladislav Machala
Prof. MUDr. Ladislav Machala, Ph.D. studied medicine at Charles University. He works at the AIDS centre of the Bulovka Hospital and lectures on infectious diseases at the Third Faculty of Medicine of Charles University.
Cyril Höschl
Prof. MUDr. Cyril Höschl, DrSc, FRCPsych is a Czech psychiatrist, populariser of science and university teacher. Since 1990 he has been director of the Prague Psychiatric Centre, which in 2015 was transformed into the National Institute of Mental Health in Klecany. From 1990 to 2020 he was head of the Department of Psychiatry of the Third Faculty of Medicine of Charles University, where he is a professor.
Anna Šedivá
Prof. MUDr. Anna Šedivá, Ph.D. works on disorders of the immune system. She represents the Czech Republic on the committees of European specialist societies such as ESID, the European Society for Immunodeficiencies, and EAACI, the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. She works at the Institute of Immunology of the Second Faculty of Medicine of Charles University and is head of department at Motol University Hospital.
Petr Smejkal
MUDr. Petr Smejkal has long worked in internal and infectious medicine; he currently works at IKEM in Prague as chief epidemiologist and, since 2008, also part-time in the USA on the coast of Maine at Maine Coast Memorial Hospital.
Filip Matějka
Doc. RNDr. Filip Matějka, Ph.D. is a Czech economist and Neuron Award laureate who uses economic theory to explain the behaviour of people and of the state. He studied physics at Charles University and gained his doctorate in applied mathematics at Princeton University in the USA. He is a researcher at the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and a member of the academic staff of CERGE-EI.
The parasitologist Prof. Julius Lukeš, a member of the foundation's scientific council for biology and a member of a number of European and American scientific societies, will also join the debate.
The debate is hosted by the biochemist and member of the Neuron Foundation's board and scientific council Prof. Jan Konvalinka and Monika Vondráková, co-founder of the Neuron Foundation.
Thank you to our general partners IOCB and IOCB Tech and to the debate's partners ABRA, Deloitte, Pilulka.cz, Seznam.cz and Forbes.
General partners of the Neuron Foundation:
