Professor Francis Carbone

Fulbright Senior Scholarship

Media Profile

“Unraveling some of the more basic mechanisms involved in the body’s immune system forms the basis of research into areas such as vaccine construction, as well as therapeutic drugs for auto-immune diseases, such as HIV.”

Professor Francis Carbone, a world leading immunologist from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at The University of Melbourne, is one of two Australians to win a 2007 Fulbright Senior Scholarship. Professor Carbone will travel to the Scripps Institute, California, to conduct collaborative research into the role of cross-presentation in the immune responses to virus infection. He will be working in the laboratory of the world leading immunogeneticist, Dr Bruce Beutler.

“In healthy individuals, the immune system rids the body of infectious viruses and other microbes,” explains Professor Carbone. “I plan to examine a series of inbred animals developed by Dr Beutler in California which have genetic mutation in key immunological pathways, for their ability to mount effective anti-viral immune responses.

“Anti-viral immunity is made up of various types of white-blood cells. One of these is the killer T cell, so named because it kills and eliminates virus-infected cells. In order to initiate killer T cell immunity, the body makes use of another cell, a dendritic cell. It is thought that this latter cell relays information from sites of infection to the killer T cell compartment by using a mechanism called ‘cross-presentation’."

“I study the role of cross-presentation in the context of infection with viruses generally and herpes simplex virus in particular. Dr Bruce Beutler has been separately studying cross-presentation by generating inbred strains of animals with defined genetic mutations within the molecular pathway used for cross-presentation. He has so far not tested his system with this virus infection, which is the purpose of my research.”

Professor Carbone graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Honours) and PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Melbourne. He also conducted postdoctoral research at Scripps Research Institute. His research has been recognised with a wide range of fellowships including an American Arthritis Foundation New Investigator Award, a Cancer Research Institute New Investigator Award, a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship and an Australian Research Council Senior Research Fellowship. Professor Carbone has become a leading international figure in the analysis of immunity to the alpha herpes viruses.

Over the past 15 years, Professor Carbone has been conducting collaborative research with Dr Bill Heath from the Walter Eliza Medical Research Institute with a focus on ‘cross-presentation’ and dendritic cell biology. They are internationally recognised for this work and the biological tools they have developed are now used in research laboratories worldwide.

“I continue to be intrigued by the immune mechanisms that keep viruses at bay. My long term goal is to understand them, and then apply this knowledge to alleviate infection and disease.