Dr. Naif Alharbi

Dr. Naif Khalaf Alharbi is a virologist and vaccinologist at KAIMRC, MNG-HA, Riyadh. He has attained his BSc in Medical Microbiology (Qassim University), MSc in Molecular Medical Microbiology (University of Nottingham), and DPhil in Molecular Virology and Vaccinology (University of Oxford). He spent his postdoctoral fellowship in the Jenner Institute, University of Oxford, where he developed ChAdOx MERS, a novel vaccine against MERS-CoV, that is now heading to phase I clinical trial. Dr. Alharbi has published high impact research articles on the development of MVA (Modified Vaccinia virus Ankara) viral vector and ChAdOx1 MERS vaccine and has filed two patents with his Oxford collaborators on these developments.

At KAIMRC, Dr. Alharbi is a PI on two vaccine development grants and his research interest is focused on vaccines against emerging pathogens and on studying viruses that are of importance to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Middle East region.