Research Areas;
1. Vaccines - based on recombinant proteins and synthetic peptides. Here we are investigating how to enhance immune responses to recombinant proteins and synthetic peptides through formulation and or synthetic modifications of peptides. These are aimed at enhancing mucosal delivery to simulate either a antibody protective response or a cytotoxic T cell protective response. Our target organisms are mucosal pathogens and cancer e.g. squamous cell carcinoma.
2. Mucosal and innate immunology. We have a keen interest in understanding how bacteria and their products (typically oral bacteria and outer membrane vesicles) interact and dysregulate the host immune system. To this end we are studying the role innate T cells such as NKT cells, T cells, MAITs, neutrophils, macrophages and how these interact with other immune cells to result in chronic inflammation typically seen in oral/mucosal diseases.
3. Antimicrobial peptides. Antibiotic resistance in microbes is a major health concern and we are investigating this by producing and altering a novel class of antibiotics called antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). These AMPs are naturally produced by the immune system and as part of the natural defence of a wide variety of organisms. AMPs have a major advantage over traditional antibiotics in that they target microbial membrane and so resistance to this is very limited. Our work is focussed on altering these naturally occurring peptides using a variety of organic and peptide chemistry techniques and testing these in a wider variety of microbes that are antibiotic sensitive or resistant.
4. Cancer. Our interests here are in developing a cytotoxic T cell vaccine approach to oral cancer. This research combines elements of our vaccine design and mucosal immunology projects to investigate how to stimulate the immune system to recognise tumour antigens and induce a memory immune response to these antigens.

These research areas use human and animal samples so that our research has a high degree of translation to human diseases that we are targeting.
Expertise within and techniques used in the laboratory are;
Tissue culture - human and animal. Proliferation assays (T cells, PBMCs, epithelial cells, tumour cells).
Flow cytometry - cell sorting (FACS), multi-colour flow cytometric analysis, intracellular cytokine staining, cytokine capture, CSFE, SNARF, pHrodo labelling cells and proteins.
Peptide synthesis and purification, including mass spectrometry, CD and NMR.
Laboratory assays routinely carried out include; real time PCR, PCR, ELISA, ELISPOT (B and T cell), SDS PAGE, western blotting, FPLC and HPLC purification of proteins and peptides, bacterial growth (anaerobic and aerobic), protein isolation, cytokine assays (Bioplex, cell capture), Toll-like receptor (TLR) analysis and stimulation.

We have a number of PhD and honours projects suitable in most our research areas.

Professorial Fellow

Melbourne Dental School

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Division

Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences

Primary Interest

Cancer research - therapeutics and vaccines

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