Corporate Body

Immunology Division (1996 - )

The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research

From
1996
Functions
Medical Research
Website
http://www.wehi.edu.au/research/divisions/imm/index.html

Summary

The Immunology Division was created in 1996-1997 by the amalgamation of the Thymus Biology Unit, the Lymphocyte Differentiation Unit and the Cellular Immunology Unit (CIU). The Electron Microscopy Laboratory (originally part of the CIU) did not join the merger and was moved to the newly created Transplantation Unit. Today, research within the Division is focused on intracellular signalling in lymphocytes, antigen processing and presentation, and development of lymphocytes and dendritic cells.

Details

The Immunology Division was established to create a better understanding of the basic functions of the immune system and the way it develops from stem cells in bone marrow. This basic information will be applied to improving vaccines and avoiding autoimmune disease. Today the Division focuses on three cell types: B lymphocytes that make antibodies, T lymphocytes that kill infected cells, and dendritic cells (DC) that collect foreign material, process it and present it to the lymphocytes to initiate immune responses. This Division is recognised as one of the leading DC research laboratories in the world. Research is at both the level of the cell and its interactions and at the level of the molecular signals within the cells that govern cell responses. Genetically modified mice lacking or over-expressing particular genes are used to examine the changes effected by genetic modification. These changes offer insights into spontaneous immune system malfunction, such as those that occur in the autoimmune disease diabetes. These transgenic mice are also useful for increasing the understanding of the immunopathology of diseases like AIDS and may possibly lead to improved vaccines and immunisation strategies.

Published resources

Resources

Emily Geraghty & Annette Alafaci

EOAS ID: biogs/A002259b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by the Centre for Transformative Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 February (Kooyang - Gariwerd calendar)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#kooyang
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/A002259b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260