Vaccine and Immunotherapy Technologies

9-11 April 2008, Canberra

Professor Peter Colman

Head, Structural Biology Division, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne

Peter Colman received his undergraduate and PhD degrees at the University of Adelaide. He took an interest in the potential of physics to address biological problems, which led him to work in the area of protein crystallography for three years in the US, and in the area of antibodies for another three years in Germany. On his return to Australia in 1975, Peter continued his work on antibodies through x-ray crystallography, and his studies of the influenza virus neuraminidase protein showed how antigenic variation was expressed in the three-dimensional structure of the protein. He obtained the first atomic resolution picture of a viral antigen (neuraminidase) bound to a monoclonal antibody, thus defining the structural requirements for antibody-selected variants of a virus. His studies on the relationship between the enzymatic and antigenic functions of the protein led his laboratory to the discovery of the neuraminidase-inhibitor class of anti-influenza virus drugs.

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