March 2025

The year is kicking along well, with plenty of research projects on the go. We are conducting a prospective study on collecting people with acute Flu, RSV or COVID that should prove interesting over the next couple of years. We’ve been studying how COVID mRNA vaccines circulate and get degraded slowly – see first paper here – Thakshila is doing an excellent job with all the clinical samples and PCR assays. Our COVID mAb PDI204 is progressing towards a phase I first in human study later this year together with Nucleus Network and other partners. Janavi is helping keep this program on track.

Great news is that Marios was awarded a 5-year EL2 NHMRC investigator grant recently – well deserved success in a very tough system. Our close collaborators Amy Chung and David Ju were also NHMRC Investigator grant recipients – congratulations. Jen, Adam, Stephen and the team review drafts of these important grants helping them put their best foot forward and we’re very proud of their successes.

Lara and Mai organized a very successful lab international lunch where people brought food in reflecting some of their heritage – see photos. Everything was delicious – even a jelly salad from Jen’s grandmother’s recipe which tasted better than it looked. Thankfully there were no fisticuffs over an “Australian” pavlova with our NZ colleagues Palak and Nicky – fortunately they had very tasty Indian and Thai dishes to concentrate on!