Centre for Innate Immunity & Infectious Disease Student Projects

Centre Director: Professor Paul Hertzog

The Centre for Innate Immunity and Infectious Disease (CIIIID), led by Professor Paul Hertzog, is the new centre name for what was previously known as the Centre for Functional Genomics and Human Disease.  The new name has been chosen to reflect the changes over recent years to the research focus, which is the molecular regulation of the innate immune response. This early immune response determines how the body responds to infection by pathogens. It initiates the inflammatory response and can modulate the development of autoimmune disease and cancer.

By understanding the molecular pathways that regulate these processes as well as their normal, physiological roles, the CIIID aim to contribute to the development of new approaches to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease using drugs and prevention using vaccines.

Student projects for 2009 are available in the Centre's three research groups:

• Molecular regulation of immunity
• Cytokine signalling
• Toll-like receptor signalling

Additionally, projects are also available with the Lung Research Group.

Staff and students working in CIIID have collective multidisciplinary expertise in molecular biology, signal transduction, protein interactions, cell biology, immunology, infectious disease, functional genomics and bioinformatics and transgenic techniques for generating and characterising gene knockout and transgenic mice as models of human disease.  Research within the CIIID provides a multidisciplinary teaching and training environment that provides students with a strong range of skills in biomedical research that that are recognised internationally for a research career.