Dr Heli Harvala LicMed, MSc, PhD, FRCPath
Consultant Medical Virologist / Principal Investigator, NHS Blood and Transplant, Colindale
Heli Harvala (LicMed, MSc, PhD, FRCPath, 77 publications, h-index 33) is Consultant Medical Virologist at NHS Blood and Transplant and Honorary Clinical Associate Professor in Virology at UCL. Her ongoing research activity spans from enteroviruses to clinical virology and transfusion medicine, including a special focus on molecular epidemiology.
Heli graduated in Medicine from the University of Turku, Finland in 2002, along with the Master’s degree in Organic Chemistry. She trained in Clinical Virology in Edinburgh and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists in 2015 by exam. Subsequently, she completed the 2-year European Public Health Microbiology fellowship, organised by ECDC, in Public Health Agency of Sweden. Following that, she moved back to the UK and took her first Virology Consultant post at the University College of London Hospital in September 2016. She has been working at the NHS Blood and Transplant as a consultant Medical Virologist since the beginning of 2018 and was recently nominated as a Principal Investigator.
Her previous research has mostly focused on enterovirus (EV) and parechovirus (HPeV) infections, involving the establishment and performance testing of screening and typing methods in diagnostic laboratories across Europe. This work has also led to our understanding of the clinical significance of HPeV infections and identification of HPeV type 3 as a major cause of meningitis and sepsis-like illness in young children throughout the world. This work has been widely recognised internationally and Heli was awarded the ESCV prize lectureship in 2012. HPeV screening of CSF samples obtained from children is now recommended throughout the UK and typing methods for both EV and HPeV I developed have also been adopted worldwide. She has also evaluated European preparedness for enterovirus detection and characterisation, subsequently a large-scale study on enterovirus infections published in Lancet Infectious Diseases. This has provided Heli with comprehensive skills in leading large networks across different countries, knowledge of surveillance systems used in Europe, and people involved within these networks. Heli also initiated the establishment of European Non-Polio Enterovirus Network (ENPEN) under auspices of ESCV in 2016 and has been leading that since.
She leads on NHS Blood and Transplant investigations to transfusion transmitted infections in England and has been focusing more recently on blood safety related research. Her initial studies focused on universal hepatitis E screening and the effectiveness of current donation screening to identify occult HBV infection. She planned and led a project highlighting the lack of effectiveness of current blood donor screening strategy for occult HBV detection by performing residual risk calculations using South African and Australian models; this work formed a basis for a document submitted to SaBTO review in September 2019 and subsequent policy change. She has also been leading a collaborative project focussed on the use of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among blood donors and its potential to reduce the effectiveness of HIV screening. This work showed, for the first time in Europe, that blood donors have not disclosed their previous antiviral use in England. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, she has also been largely involved with SARS-CoV-2 research. She was a Clinical Lead for Convalescent Plasma Testing Group and been also involved with two Convalescent Plasma clinical trials established in England. She was innovating and developing the testing strategy for convalescent plasma since the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 were identified in China, collaborating closely with PHE, NIBSC and the University of Oxford. She has further developed this collaboration via the European Blood Alliances and is leading a project to harmonise neutralising antibody measurements in convalescent plasma in Europe and beyond.
Most of her work has been in the area of molecular virology, including next generation sequencing (NGS) and viral genomic investigations of enteroviruses, parechoviruses, measles, influenza viruses, SARS-CoV-2 and also C. difficile. As a member of Executive Team for European Society of Clinical Virology, she has also been involved in establishing European Network for NGS (ENNGS). She is also a member of the European Blood Alliance and International Blood Transfusion Study groups on Convalescent Plasma and Transfusion Transmitted Infections.
Sessions
Update to enterovirus infections
Thursday @ 9:30 AM
