Associate Professor Cheryl Jones
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Associate Professor
C29 - Children's Hospital Westmead |
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Research interests
Associate Professor Jones established the Herpesvirus Research Unit at The Children's Hospital at Westmead in 1999. Her research work addresses the significant clinical problem of infections acquired by the fetus and newborn through maternal infection (congenital and perinatal infections). These infections also contribute to a large burden of disease and disability and a large but unmeasured burden of miscarriages, stillbirths, and premature births. Her overall research objective is to reduce this by directing antenatal and postnatal interventions. The major achievements of her collaborative research over the past 5 years have been to demonstrate that:
* The newborn to mount a reduced cytotoxic T cell response to herpes simplex virus
* Newborn dendritic cells display impaired ability to activate T cells (using novel technologies that track the induction of the newborn antiviral response in vivo)
* Herpes simplex virus (HSV) causes programmed cell death (apoptosis) of dendritic cells, the first immune cell to contrast the virus, in contrast to its effect on virtually every other cell type studied.
* Australia has a large burden of medically important congenital and perinatal infections that are not recorded by Federal reporting systems (e.g. HSV, cytomegalovirus- CMV, hepatitis C virus) using de-identified national surveillance.
Current national competitive grants*
2008
The effect of age on regulatory T cell control of the innate and adaptive antiviral immune response
Jones C, Cunningham A, Alexander S
Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project ($318,000 over 3 years)
* Grants administered through the University of Sydney