WEHI Postgraduate Seminar Series hosted by the Education Committee

Professor Joanna Groom (PhD)
NHMRC Leadership Investigator Fellow – Immunology Division Head, WEHI
Drug Delivery, Disposition & Dynamics (D4) Division – MIPS

Rethinking Vaccine Design: A Mechanistic View of Protective Immunity

Davis Auditorium

Join via TEAMS

Including Q&A session

Vaccination is one of the greatest successes in modern medicine, dramatically reducing the global burden of infectious diseases and saving millions of lives each year. From the eradication of smallpox to the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines, advances in immunology and biotechnology have transformed our ability to prevent disease. Yet despite these achievements, major challenges remain. Many pathogens, including HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and emerging viruses, continue to evade durable protective immunity, while vaccine-induced responses can wane over time and vary across populations and with age. Addressing these challenges will require a deeper mechanistic understanding of how effective immune memory is generated, maintained, and tailored to different pathogens and tissues. These insights will not only guide the development of next-generation vaccines against infectious disease, but also inform emerging strategies to harness vaccination approaches for cancer immunotherapy.

In this talk, I will discuss the recent history and future of vaccine development, and how new mechanistic approaches to assessing immune responses may help address current challenges in the field. I will then be joined by Professors Colin Pouton and Natalie Trevaskis from the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS), leaders in RNA-LNP technology, for a panel discussion on the future of vaccine and therapeutic design.

Professor Joanna Groom is an NHMRC Leadership Investigator Fellow and co-division head of the Immunology division of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI), with a co-appointment at MIPS. The vision of the Groom lab is to understand lymphoid positioning and cellular interactions as key leverage points that direct the outcomes of immune responses. Our aim is to continuously apply these fundamental insights to drive the generation of new therapies for the prevention and treatment of immunological and infectious disease and cancer.

All welcome!