Congratulations to Fabienne Mackay, Eric Chow and Jeffrey Rosenfeld

The AMREP Research Prize 2014 for the article describing original basic research published in the journal with the highest impact factor in 2013 was awarded to Professor Fabienne Mackay (Department of Immunology, Monash University). The prize was one of a suite awarded for work presented during the Alfred Research Week 27-31 October 2014. See more.

Dr Eric Chow's poster won the Burnet Prize for Infectious Diseases Research from  those submitted for the Alfred Research Week. The poster was entitled ‘Ongoing decline in genital warts among young heterosexuals seven years after the Australian Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination programme’.  See more.

Professor Jeffrey V. Rosenfeld is the new Director of the Monash Institute of Medical Engineering. See more

Prof Fabienne Mackay talks about restoration of immune function in leukaemia patients

Prof Fabienne Mackay:
Video on CLL research

Professor Fabienne Mackay talks about her team's ground breaking research published in the prestigious journal, Leukemia in April of this year. Immune defects in patients with #leukaemia prevent them from fighting the cancer. Their study looked particularly at Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (CLL) patients, as they tend to die from infection, rather than the cancer itself. They found that rare, but critical, cells to fight CLL can be restored. She says, "The best feature ever made to fight cancer is the immune system."

Donate to lupus research

Professor Fabienne Mackay

Professor Fabienne Mackay leads a research team dedicated to the development of new therapies to treat lupus. Professor Mackay's work has been instrumental in the development of a new treatment called belimumab. This is the first new treatment for lupus in over 50 years. While this is an advance in medicine it is only effective in a subset of patients. There is still a large number of patients awaiting an effective treatment. The team includes Dr Fabien Vincent, a rheumatologist whose research is aimed at understanding why lupus develops differently in different groups of people.

• See more.
• Direct link to Lupus donation page.
• Twitter: @FabienneMackay @FabOzy

Faculty of 1000 selects Department of Immunology Leukemia article

Post publication peer

review acknowledgement

Department of Immunology research on chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) has been recommended by the Faculty of 1000 as being of special significance in its field. The reviewer, Dr Philippe Saas, writes,  "these data may explain the vulnerability of CLL patients to viral infections and provide therapeutic approaches (Flt3L plus CpG ODN or anti-TNF plus anti-TGF-beta antibodies) to restore PDC number and PDC capacity to produce type I IFN in peripheral lymphoid tissues." References: