Mohammed Alsharifi
The University of Adelaide, Australia
Biography
Dr Alsharifi grew up in Babylon/Iraq and studied Veterinary Medicine at Baghdad University. He was increasingly interested in medical research and after coming to Australia he studied Biomedical Science at Monash University. He then moved to the Australian National University to take up a PhD scholarship at The John Curtin School of Medical Research, and investigated with Arno Müllbacher, Robert Blanden, and Mario Lobigs the immunobiology of an alphavirus infection. During his early years in research he discovered a period of exhaustion in type-I interferon response following an acute viral infection, which may explain the clinically known observation that virus-infected patients are at increased risk to a more sever secondary viral and/or bacterial infection. Following the completion of his PhD studies, he investigated with Prof Müllbacher the possibility of using gamma-irradiated influenza virus as a universal flu vaccine. In 2008, he was awarded the Hanson Fellowship to continue his research into the universal Flu vaccine and also to investigate the possibility of producing other viral vaccines using similar technique to that used for influenza. His flu vaccine research has been featured in the Catalyst program on ABC (http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2613604.htm), and in many newspaper articles.
Abstract
Abstract : Gamma-ray Inactivated Vaccines: Concepts and Applications
