Denise Doolan

Denise Doolan is a Professorial Research Fellow (Immunology of Infectious Diseases) in the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine, James Cook University (Cairns, Campus). She completed her B.Sc (Hons, Biochemistry) at the University of Queensland; M.Phil (Life Sciences) at Griffith University/CSIRO; and PhD (Molecular Immunology, 1993) under the supervision of Michael Good at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research. She was awarded a National Academy of Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship to work at the United States Naval Medical Research Center with Stephen Hoffman on malaria vaccine development. After appointments as Director of Basic and Preclinical Research & Development and then Scientific Director of the US Navy Malaria Program, she returned to Australia in 2007. She established the Molecular Vaccinology Laboratory at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, with the support of a Pfizer Australia Senior Research Fellowship, followed by a NHMRC Principal Research Fellowship. She was appointed as Coordinator of the QIMR Biology Department; Member of the QIMR Director’s Consultative Committee / Management Advisory Committee; and Adjunct Professor in the University of Queensland School of Medicine. She also served on the Executive Board of the Australian Society of Parasitology for 4 years (President for 2 years). She relocated to the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine, James Cook University (Cairns Campus) in January 2016.

Research

Denise is a molecular immunologist. Her research focuses on developing novel immunotherapeutics and immunodiagnostics for complex pathogens that cause chronic diseases, using malaria as a model. Much of her career has focused on malaria immunology and vaccine development. Most recently, she is moving into the area that intersects infectious and chronic disease.Her research agenda encompasses core themes of (1) host-pathogen immunity, (2) antigen discovery, (3) vaccine engineering, and (4) biomarker discovery, using state-of-the-art genome-based technologies and human models of disease. A particular focus is systems immunology, which integrates immunology with cutting-edge omics-based technologies, bioinformatics and computational sciences to interrogate the human immune response to infection at a level of detail previously restricted to mouse models. She has strong expertise in the process of vaccine development, spanning the complete vaccine development pipeline from discovery to clinical testing, including regulatory aspects and IND applications. She has also played a leading role internationally in driving the development and application of approaches to identify priority target antigens, molecules and immune mechanisms that can be targeted for intervention against malaria. Although her primary focus has been malaria, many of the technologies and strategies established for malaria can be applied to a range of public health threats.

Denise is passionate about improving the health of the millions of people worldwide suffering from infectious and chronic diseases.

Click on your right for Denise's most updated publications link to ORCID or Research Gate.

Teaching

James Cook University TM5525 Communicable Disease Control (2017, 2018, 2019)

Infectious diseases are the consequence of complex interactions between microbiological agents (pathogens), physical and social environments, and human hosts. This subject examines how controlling communicable disease of public health importance requires a wide variety of strategies to address these interactions. Deals with the principles and practice of public health surveillance, disease outbreak recognition and responses, immunisation, and a variety of other disease control strategies relevant to Australia as well as to many low- and middle-income countries.

James Cook University MD3011 Introduction to Clinical Healthcare (2017)

This subject continues the study of integrated medical and social sciences for the whole human body. Students will continue to develop their knowledge and understanding of molecular, cellular, organ, individual person, health system and societal influences on human health, integrated around themes within tissue injury and neoplasia, infection and immunology and preventive medicine and addictive behaviours.

James Cook University Masters of Parasitology course (2016)