Jackson laboratory: Synthetic vaccine design
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Head of Laboratory
Professor David Jackson+61 3 834 49940
Research Overview
The research interests of the laboratory centre around the discovery and development of novel and innovative vaccine candidates. Using the techniques of chemical synthesis and molecular biology and/or a combination of both, we have developed vaccines for a variety of disease indications from infectious diseases to hormone blockade and substances of abuse including cocaine and methamphetamine.
A dominant strategy of these research efforts is to design the vaccine rationally; in other words to only include those components that are necessary for the desired and appropriate immune outcome. This means that we can remove unnecessary and sometimes dangerous components to provide safer vaccines that elicit antibody and/or cell-mediated immune responses. We also build into our vaccines an ability to be highly immunogenic, a feature that obviates the addition of extraneous adjuvants.
The laboratory has approximately ten members consisting of post doctoral fellows, research assistants and PhD students with undergraduate students providing a continuous flow of new talent each year. The laboratory operates through individual research efforts and through partnerships that are formed between one or more laboratory members and which are driven by unmet medical needs and the skills that are possessed by the various team members. Some of the projects and programs currently running in our laboratory are described below. Opportunities exist for motivated, intelligent and committed scientists to join the laboratory.
Staff
Dr Brendon Chua, SRO
Dr Weiguang Zeng, SRO
Miss Kylie Horrocks, PhD
Miss Kirstie Mangas, PhD
Mr Toshiki Sekiya, PhD
Mr Acep Riza Wijayadikusumah, PhD
Miss Chinn Yi Wong, RA