Alex Loukas

I obtained a BSc Hons in 1990 and a PhD in 1995 from University of Queensland in the field of immunoparasitology. I then conducted postdoctoral work at University of Edinburgh with Rick Maizels and an assistant professorship at George Washington University in the US to work with Peter Hotez and the Human Hookworm Vaccine Initiative. In 2004 I returned to Australia as an NHMRC Career Development Fellow at Queensland Institute of Medical Research where I established the Helminth Biology laboratory. In 2010 I moved to James Cook University in Cairns, QLD as a Tropical Research Leader, where I established the Centre for Biodiscovery and Molecular Development of Therapeutics. I have held consistent NHMRC funding in the form of fellowships (currently level 3 Investigator), program grants, project grants and development grants, as well as regular funding from the US National Institutes of Health and various pharmaceutical companies, including Merck and Johnson & Johnson. I am co-founder of Macrobiome Therapeutics, a start-up biotech company developing worm-derived proteins as anti-inflammatory therapeutics.

My group is primarily interested in the secretomes of parasitic helminths, and the subsequent use of worm secreted proteins as therapeutics and diagnostic tools. Major projects in the lab include;

1. Use of worm proteins as novel anti-inflammatories for treating a range of autoimmune and allergic disorders of humans.

2. Clinical trials to assess the therapeutic properties of iatrogenic hookworm infection in human inflammatory and metabolic diseases

3. Use of proteome microarrays to discover vaccine and diagnostic antigens for human helminth infections.

4. Understanding the mechanisms by which parasitic helminths suppress (and in some cases, drive) immunopathology with a particular emphasis on extracellular proteins and vesicles.

In addition to my role at JCU, I serve as deputy editor of the International Journal for Parasitology.