WEHI Special Infection & Global Health seminar hosted by Dr Rhea Longley

Associate Professor Michelle Boyle BA/BSc(Hons) PhD

Working Group Head
– Cellular Responses to Disease and Vaccination
; Snow Fellow 2024, CSL Centenary Fellow 2023, EMBL Australia Group Leader – 
Burnet Institute

Host-directed therapy Modulates Inflammation and Enhances Antiparasitic Immunity in human experimental P. falciparum Infection

 

Davis Auditorium

Join via TEAMS

Including Q&A session

A/Prof Boyle completed her PhD in at the University of Melbourne in 2012, under the supervision of Prof James Beeson investigating functions of protective antibodies in malaria. From 2013-2015, she was an NHMRC CJ Martin Early Career Fellow at University of California, San Francisco and focused on CD4 T cell response in children in areas of high malaria transmission.Returning to Australia, Michelle developed an independent program focused on cellular mechanisms driving human immunity to malaria. She was awarded the AIPS Young Tall Poppy Science Award (2016) and was recruited to QIMR-Berghofer in 2018 as an EMBL-Australia Group Leader. In 2023, Michelle’s team joined the Burnet Institute, where she is a Snow Medical and CSL Centenary Fellow. Her  research program aims to develop vaccines and therapeutics for malaria through novel insights in human immunity. Michelle has made fundamental discoveries of specific types and functions of antibodies that protect from malaria, and the CD4 T cells that drive protective responses.

To translate her findings, Michelle is currently leading a human malaria infection clinical trial to investigate if host directed therapy can boost immune development. This approach has broad implications for other chronic infections where protective immune development is compromised. She also collaborates with disease specific experts including those in Group A Streptococcus and Hepatitis C to extend her research findings to other pathogens

All Welcome!