Biography

Michelle Wykes is Group Leader of the Molecular Immunology Laboratory at the QIMR Berghofer. She is an expert on “immune checkpoints” which are the basis for a new type of cancer treatment known as “immunotherapy”.  Her research in “immune checkpoints” started when she was looking for the reason Plasmodium spp, which cause malaria, could evade immunity. Her group published a paradigm–shifting study which showed Programmed cell death ligand 2 was essential for immunity. This line of research, published in Immunity and Nature Reviews Immunology, has led to several patents and NHMRC funding to develop novel treatments for cancer.