Among the EMBL Australia group leaders who have successfully secured significant philanthropic funding is A/Prof Michelle Boyle, an emerging leader in malaria research at the Burnet Institute.
With major support from the Snow Medical Fellowship ($1 million per year for eight years), she is leveraging novel insights into human immunity to develop new vaccines and treatments for malaria – a leading cause of death in children under five worldwide.
Her work focuses on studying how the human immune system directly responds to malaria in tissues like tonsils and spleens, and designing host-directed therapy that can boost immunity and protection from disease.
Using these unique clinical samples from malaria patients and a lab-based system that mimics immune processes, her team is identifying therapeutics to strengthen the immune response.
The findings could also benefit people with other chronic infections, as well as vulnerable groups, like the elderly and immunocompromised.
In 2023, A/Prof Michelle Boyle was awarded Australia’s largest philanthropic biomedical fellowship – the $8m Snow Medical Fellowship – to support her research into malaria immunity.