Lab Head
Monash University
Clayton, Victoria, Australia
A/Prof. Ooi (PhD, 2009) is an Australian NHMRC Leadership Fellow, Head of the Treg Therapies Group at Monash University and co-founder of Resseptor Therapeutics. The vision of his group is to translate their high-profile experimental work on regulatory T cells (Tregs) into clinical treatments for patients with autoimmune diseases. He has published his work in the prestigious journals PNAS 2012, JCI 2013 and Nat Commun 2019; as well as >20 times in the top two nephrology journals JASN and Kidney Int. Importantly, he published a 1st author landmark paper in Nature, 2017, showing that antigen-specific Tregs were key protectors of autoimmune disease. He has received numerous prizes for these works including the international Mosaic of Autoimmunity Award, Best Science Awards from both the Australian Immunology and Nephrology societies and the Victoria Prize for Science and Innovation.
Based on the discovery that antigen-specific Tregs were important in suppressing pathogenic autoreactivity, A/Prof. Ooi’s lab developed a platform for genetically engineering antigen-specific Tregs using a patient’s own Tregs. They have successfully engineered Tregs specific for a key autoantigen in lupus, known as the Smith (Sm) autoantigen, and showed that these Sm-specific Tregs could effectively suppress pathogenic autoreactivity (Nat Commun 2024). The team has now secured industry funding to translate this proof-of-concept work into a first-in-human clinical trial.
Disclosure information not submitted.
Engineered Antigen-specific Regulatory T Cells (Tregs) to Treat Autoimmune Diseases
Friday, June 27, 2025
10:30am - 11:00am East Coast USA Time
