Unlocking the Secrets: Novel Insights into Immune Functions Revealed by Studying Cytomegalovirus Infection

Host: Professor David Tscharke

Abstract

The immune system plays a crucial role in fighting pathogens, but notably immune processes also regulate and limit inflammation to ensure optimal functioning of tissues and organs. Understanding the regulation of immune responses is therefore essential for achieving the delicate equilibrium that guarantees protection against infections while averting harmful inflammation, thereby achieving optimal immunity. Viruses capable of establishing lifelong infections have developed strategies to effectively manipulate immune responses. By studying infection with the herpesvirus cytomegalovirus we have gained several new insights into critical aspects of effective immunity. I will discuss new mechanisms pertaining to the initiation and regulation of adaptive immune responses.

Biography

Mariapia Degli-Esposti is a Professor at Monash University. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and was recently elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

Mariapia received a PhD in Immunology from the University of Western Australia (UWA) and undertook post-doctoral studies at Royal Perth Hospital (Perth, Australia) and then Immunex (Seattle, USA). She returned to Australia as Group Leader in the Department of Microbiology at UWA. She has held competitive Research Fellowships from the Wellcome Trust and the NHMRC. In 2003 she moved to the Lions Eye Institute as Head of Immunology and became Director of Research in 2009. She moved to Monash University in 2019 where she heads the Experimental and Viral Immunology Group within the Infection and Immunity Program at the Biomedicine Discovery Institute and the Department of Microbiology. She continues to hold an appointment at the Lions Eye Institute as an Honorary Fellow. Mariapia also holds an Affiliate appointment at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.

Mariapia is internationally recognised for her research in the interactions between innate and adaptive immunity and how these interactions affect the outcome of immune responses especially in settings of viral infection and autoimmunity.