WEHI Wednesday Seminar hosted by Associate Professor Joanna Groom

Dr Vanessa Bryant
Laboratory Head, WEHI
Clinical Scientist, The Royal Melbourne Hospital
Deputy Scientific Director, Snow Centre for Immune Health

Decoding Immune Health: Leveraging measures of lymphocyte function and inborn errors to uncover drivers of immune dysfunction

 

Davis Auditorium

Join via SLIDO enter code #WEHIWednesday

Including Q&A session
 

The immune system is a dynamic and tightly regulated network that defends against infection while maintaining tolerance. But when that balance is lost, the consequences can be devastating.

The Bryant Lab leads a multidisciplinary translational research program investigating how genetic and functional variation drive immune dysregulation. By integrating genomic discovery with high-resolution assays that model lymphocyte fate decision-making, the team is uncovering fundamental defects in rare inborn errors of immunity, unsolved antibody deficiencies and other immune-mediated diseases, such as Sjogren’s syndrome and Coeliac disease. We have developed scalable single cell platforms to characterise lymphocyte dysfunction and are now applying these approaches to large, prospectively recruited patient cohorts through the Snow Centre for Immune Health. The program combines advanced functional immunoassays, genomics and deep immune profiling across patients with immunodeficiency, autoimmunity, allergy and transplant, aiming to define predictive immune signatures, identify novel therapeutic targets and enable personalised immune health monitoring at scale.

Vanessa’s research spans national and international partnerships, including the MRFF-funded ALIGN (Australian Alliance for Indigenous Genomics) and AIGA (Australian ImmunoGenomics Alliance) programs, and demonstrates how discovery and translational research can be purposefully structured to accelerate diagnosis, improve clinical outcomes and ensure equitable access to clinical genomics for people living with rare and complex immune diseases.

All welcome!