QIMR Berghofer in collaboration with St. John’s Research Institute (SJRI) in Bengaluru, India has been awarded an Australia-India Strategic Research Fund (AISRF) grant to progress research on a cellular immunotherapy that targets life-threatening viral infections in immunocompromised transplant recipients.
The Australian federal government funding will support Professor Rajiv Khanna and his team at QIMR Berghofer to expand their innovative adoptive T cell therapy directed to viral complications to India, addressing an unmet clinical need among transplant recipients and other vulnerable patient groups across the country.
St. John’s Research Institute (SJRI) will receive matching funding from the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India.
Professor Khanna said expanding this therapy to India would improve treatment options for both countries.
“This collaboration with St.John’s Research Institute will enhance access to these breakthrough therapies in India and in Australia, and enable us to gather more diverse research data from Australians of South Asian descent and Indian nationals,” he said.
“This is important for global research because for many years the focus has been too narrow to allow for better treatment for people from different ethnic and genetic backgrounds.
“It also lays important groundwork for future industry investment in cellular immunotherapy across both countries.”
For over 15 years, Professor Khanna and his team have worked to bring novel T cell therapies to the clinic to help people facing life-threatening viral infections, including those stemming from common viruses like Epstein-Barr virus, cytomegalovirus, and adenovirus.
The team have already completed multiple clinical trials of their T cell therapy, and it is currently supplied to patients throughout Australia as a last resort under the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s (TGA) Special Access Scheme.
Professor Khanna is a Distinguished Scientist and Head of the Tumour Immunology Laboratory at QIMR Berghofer. His team conducts internationally recognised research on human immune regulation, with a focus on understanding how immune responses to viral infections and cancer can be strengthened and translated into effective therapies.
The Indian arm of the collaboration will be led by Professor Alok Srivastava, Head of the Haemotology Research Unit at SJRI, together with Professor Annapurna Vyakarnam, Adjunct Professor and Scientific Lead of the Human Immunology Laboratory in SJRI’s Department of Infectious Diseases along with their
transplant colleagues from the St. John’s Medical College Hospital.
Professor Srivastava is a Distinguished Clinician Scientist and global expert in translational haematology and cell and gene therapies. He led the world’s first lentiviral vector gene therapy for haemophilia clinical trial in India.
Professor Vyakarnam is Professor of Microbial Immunology at King’s College London and a Distinguished Scientist in Human Immunology, with an adjunct appointment at SJRI. She has established a state-of-the-art human immunology laboratory at SJRI focused on training the next generation of immunologists working to understand T cell immunity across a range of diseases.
The AISRF supports scientific collaboration between India and Australia in priority research areas. The latest round of grants was announced in late February by Dr Andrew Charlton, Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy.
Read more about the AISRF grants:
https://www.minister.industry.gov.au/ministers/charlton/media-releases/australia-and-india-back-new-ai-and-tech-projects-delivering-real-world-impact