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NHMRC excellence award for research into chronic infections

 

Walter and Eliza Hall Institute scientist Dr Marc Pellegrini has received a 2010 National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Excellence Award, recognising his efforts to understand human responses to chronic infections.

Dr Pellegrini is a laboratory head in the institute’s Infection and Immunity division and an infectious disease clinician at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. His research focuses on HIV and tuberculosis, and how the human immune system responds to these infections.

At last night’s awards ceremony the NHMRC’s chief executive officer, Professor Warwick Anderson, announced Dr Pellegrini as the joint winner in the clinical development category. The award was given to Dr Pellegrini as the top researcher who received an NHMRC career development award for 2010.

Dr Pellegrini hopes that by studying how the human immune system responds to persistent infections, particularly how cell signaling pathways regulate immunity, he will be able to eradicate chronic infections.

“Chronic viruses such as HIV, Hepatitis C and B and bacteria such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis (the cause of tuberculosis) represent an enormous global health threat,” Dr Pellegrini said. “Our immune system, which is successful in eliminating a huge array of pathogens, fails to eradicate these persistent organisms.

“Quite often we try to eradicate these infections by targeting the virus or bacterium that causes them,” Dr Pellegrini said. “I want to investigate wiping out these infections by developing therapies that target the host immune system, rather than the pathogen, possibly by making the human immune system more able to clear these infections.”

Dr Pellegrini is initially focusing his attention on the genes involved in the immune response to HIV and tuberculosis.

About Marc Pellegrini

Dr Pellegrini has degrees in medicine and science from the University of Melbourne. After completing his medical qualifications, Dr Pellegrini trained in infectious diseases and internal medicine and was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. His PhD research at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute uncovered the role of apoptosis in immune responses. Further postdoctoral study in Canada at the Ontario Cancer Institute identified factors impairing immunity. He returned to the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in 2009.

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