 Dr
Denise Doolan
Dr Denise Doolan is a molecular immunologist, whose research focus is the field of malaria – specifically, developing vaccines against malaria, understanding the molecular basis of immunity to malaria, and translating Plasmodium falciparum genomic sequence data for practical application. She is currently the head of the Translational and Vaccine Immunology laboratory at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane. Previously, she was the Scientific Director of the Malaria Program, United States Naval Medical Research Center, in Silver Spring, MD, USA, a major biomedical research facility of the United States Department of Defense.
Dr Doolan started her research career at CSIRO characterizing the molecular epidemiology of Australian arboviruses, and was awarded a M. Phil. She completed her PhD in 1993 in the laboratory of Professor Michael F. Good at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research where she characterized the T cell response to the Plasmodium falciparum circumsporozoite protein, the primary candidate antigen for development of a sporozoite/liver-stage malaria vaccine. She was awarded a prestigious National Research Council Associateship (National Academy of Sciences, USA) to support a postdoctoral fellowship in the United States, working on the development of malaria vaccines with Dr Stephen L. Hoffman at the Naval Medical Research Institute. After a brief period in Australia, she was recruited back to the US Navy in 1999 as Head of Basic Research, then Head of Preclinical Research and Development, and finally as Scientific Director of the Naval Medical Research Center Malaria Program.
Throughout her scientific career, Dr Doolan has provided critical insights into multiple facets of malaria immunology and vaccine development, extending to the more general fields of immunology, vaccinology and the advancement of public health.
During the course of her Pfizer Australia Research Fellowship, Dr Doolan will apply an emerging discipline called immunomics, which bridges the disciplines of genomics and proteomics, to the Plasmodium falciparum parasite that causes malaria. This research aims to profile the host immune response to the Plasmodium parasite on a genome-wide scale at the molecular and cellular level using a series of complementary cutting-edge technologies, in order to improve our understanding of the host-parasite relationship, dissect the molecular basis of immunity to malaria, and develop an effective malaria vaccine.
It is anticipated that this research will result in significant economic benefits to Australia, by facilitating the development of vaccines, drugs, or diagnostics; by monitoring the progression of disease or the effectiveness of interventional strategies; and by understanding host-parasite interactions. This interdisciplinary research will also foster significant international links to keep Australia on the cutting edge of biotechnology advances.
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 Dr Stephen Turner
Dr Turner is a viral immunologist who currently holds an appointment as Senior Lecturer in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne. His research interests involve the study of how a subset of white blood cells, called cytotoxic T cells, recognise and remove virally infected cells from an individual after infection. Furthermore, he is also interested in identifying specific factors that impact on the function of virus-specific cytotoxic T cells, and the establishment of immune memory after virus infection.
Dr Turner completed his Ph.D. in immunology at Monash University where he studied with Professor Frank Carbone. Cytotoxic T cells utilise a receptor (the T cell receptor) to recognise viral fragments presented at the surface of virally infected cells. These viral fragments are bound to proteins called the Major Histocompatibility complex Class I protiens. During his Ph.D. studies, Dr Turner determined how a specific T cell receptor orients itself when mediating recognition of a viral fragment-MHC class I complex. This work represented the first functional determination of antigen-specific cytotoxic T cell receptor orientation and was later confirmed when other groups published crystallographic studies of T cell receptors interacting with viral fragment-MHC class I complexes.
After a short postdoctoral appointment with Dr Janet Ruby at the University of Melbourne, Dr Turner moved to the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty in the Department of Immunology at St Jude’s Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. During this time he studied different aspects of the cytotoxic T cell responses to influenza virus infection. He adapted molecular techniques to analyse the molecular profiles of cytotoxic T cells at a single cell level. Using this technique, he was able to demonstrate that the diversity of cytotoxic T cells selected to mount an immune response to infection is maintained during all stages after infection, including the establishment of immune memory. The work was published in the Cell press journal, Immunity.
Dr Turner returned with Professor Peter Doherty in mid-2002 to the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne and helped establish a new research program. He has since established his own research program and published a seminal finding that the shape of the viral fragment complexed to a MHC class I protein, recognised by cytotoxic T cells, can influence the diversity of the T cell population selected after infection. This work was published in Nature Immunology and has resulted in a recent review published in Nature Reviews Immunology. More recent work has focussed on the molecular events that control the acquisition of cytotoxic T cell function enabling effective responses to be made against viral infection. If successful, Dr Turner will utilise the Pfizer Australia Research Fellowship to further define the precise role of specific molecular events that result in the acquisition, and more importantly the maintenance, of specific cytotoxic T cell function. Such insights are essential for the development of enhanced therapeutic and vaccination strategies to exploit cytotoxic T cell-mediated immunity. Moreover, this proposal may have a much broader application, as it may reveal novel mechanisms of for acquisition of specific cellular functions that impact in other fields, such as cancer biology.
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