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Burnet AGM - Professor Brendan Crabb - Part 3
Brendan Scott Crabb (born 13 September 1966) is an Australian immunologist, research scientist and Director and chief executive officer of the Burnet Institute, based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Contents
- Burnet AGM Professor Brendan Crabb Part 3
- Background and early career
- Research focus
- Special appointments
- Awards and honours
- References
Background and early career
Educated in Papua New Guinea and Australia, Crabb received a Bachelor of Science (Honours) from the University of Melbourne in the Department of Microbiology. In 1992, he completed his PhD in virology at the School of Veterinary Science also at the University of Melbourne. His PhD project, which explored proteins of equine herpes, led to a diagnostic test which could distinguish horses infected by the lethal equine herpes virus-1 and the less damaging equine herpes virus-4.
Research focus
Currently, his main research focus is on the identification of new targets for therapeutic intervention in malaria and the development of a malaria vaccine. More broadly, his interests mirror the mission of the Burnet Institute - to improve the health of poor and vulnerable communities through research, education and public health.
In 2009, Crabb and his research team identified the export protein translocon in malaria. This discovery was published in Nature and solved the mystery of how proteins with an export motif are trafficked out of the infected parasite and into the cytosol of the red blood cell host. This finding has broad impact in biology and also has considerable importance as a major new drug target in malaria.
Together with his principle collaborator Alan Cowman, Crabb is also well known for his development of molecular genetic systems in human malaria, having described the first gene knockout in the causative agent Plasmodium falciparum in a paper published in the journal Cell.
Crabb was appointed Director and CEO of Burnet Institute in 2007, a position previously held by Ian Gust AO, John Mills, Steve Wesselingh, now Executive Director of the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, Ian McKenzie and Mark Hogarth.
Special appointments
Crabb was President of the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes (AAMRI) from 2012 to October 2014. He is Chair of the PATH/Malaria Vaccine Initiative and Vaccine Science Portfolio Advisory Council (VSPAC), USA. He was also Chair of the Gordon Conference on Malaria in Tuscany, Italy in August 2013.
He holds honorary Professorial appointments at Monash University, Melbourne University and La Trobe Universities in Australia.
Crabb was previously Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Parasitology (2006–2009), International Fellow of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, USA (2000–2008) and Senior Principal Research Fellow in the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (appointed 2008).