Dr. Margaret Saimo-Kahwa's Profile
Name: Dr. Margaret Saimo-Kahwa
Position: Principle Investigator
Qualifications: PhD Vet
Short Bio: B.VetMed, Msc, PhD. Principle Investigator, Anti-Tick Vaccine Development Initiative. Senior Lecturer at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources and Bio-security (COVAB).
Full Bio
Dr. Margaret Saimo-Kahwa is the Principle Investigator and lead researcher of the Anti-tick Vaccine Development Initiative, the Presidential initiative to aid in the research, development, and production of an anti-vaccine. Dr. Saimo-Kahwa first began research on an anti-tick vaccine back in 2005 when she was working on her Ph.D. thesis focussed on the use of RA92A recombinant protein from Rhipicephalus appendiculatus ticks as immunogen to protect cattle against the tick challenge. Dr. Saimo’s work has since majored in the vaccine potential for tick antigens in the control of ticks and tick-borne diseases, where she has become the foremost expert on anti-tick vaccine research.
In 2014, Dr. Saimo co-authored a scientific paper entitled ‘Characterization and Production of recombinant protein Ra92A from Rhipicephalus appendiculatus aiming tick vaccine antigen in Uganda’ funded by Embrapa, Makerere University, and other organizations.
In 2017, Dr. Saimo presented further research on the vaccine potential for tick antigens to the President of the Government of Uganda, H.E . Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, who took a keen interest in the possibility of developing a local anti-tick vaccine. The president subsequently pledged government financial support for this initiative.
As a result, Dr. Saimo-Kahwa and her team of scientists in COVAB have continued to refine the vaccine technology to the point where it has been deemed safe and effective by the NDA to develop and distribute the vaccine on a commercial basis to farmers beginning in 2023.