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A new era for global immunology

Imagine a world where an immune health check was as routine as a heart check.

Where immune diseases were not silent and devastating for millions of people.

We have.

But we’re not just imagining.

The Snow Centre for Immune Health has a bold and ambitious goal to lead a new era of world-changing medical discoveries for immune health.

https://youtu.be/1x51ClOPleA?si=VlHl8zdakZ-Pts4M

“We empower bold transformative research across Australia by backing the best and brightest researchers – and resourcing them with the tools they need to be world-class.”
Tom Snow
Chair, Snow Medical Research Foundation

A major health challenge

Diseases caused or worsened by a dysfunctional immune system pose one of the greatest health challenges in society, affecting millions of people worldwide.

These conditions range from rare, life-changing genetic immune deficiencies to debilitating chronic disorders such as lupus, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, allergies and asthma.

There is no cure for any of these conditions.

Treatments are limited. Blanket approaches are common.

Collectively these disorders are astonishingly common and are increasing in frequency globally.

The big questions in immunology research

Despite decades of research, many big questions remain to be solved. Answering these questions has the potential to enormously benefit the health of humanity.

The Snow Centre team are focused on solving these mysteries.

  • We want to transform the understanding of how the immune cells make decisions.
  • We’re searching for a way to ‘wind down’ or turn off immune responses to avoid and suppress autoimmune conditions.
  • We’re working to manipulate and reverse the processes that drive allergies
  • We’re aiming to identify an individual’s risks of developing immune-related disorders and how we can correct the root causes.

 

Autoimmune diseases are a leading cause of death in women under 65.
Over 300 million people worldwide have asthma, including 1 in 9 Australians.
In Australia, allergy and immune disease are among the fastest growing chronic conditions.

Revolutionising immune health

In partnership with the Snow Medical Research Foundation (Snow Medical) have established the Snow Centre for Immune Health to tackle these major global health challenges.

The centre, co-led by WEHI and the Royal Melbourne Hospital, will bring together leading Australian and international researchers with a shared mission to transform how we research and treat the immune system. Our goal is to accelerate discoveries into the underlying features and markers of immune health, to identify disease causes early and target appropriate treatment.

The centre is funded by an initial commitment of up to $100 million over 10 years – one of the largest and longest running philanthropic partnerships in Australian history.

A world first for immune health

The Snow Centre for Immune Health has a global mission to improve the lives of people with immune diseases, using a new approach to immune health.

The immune system is famously complex; however, we have found that the processes that determine immune cell decisions can be distilled into several key components. Computational modelling of how these components integrate to drive immune responses provides a new framework for understanding immune function and dysfunction. By understanding how molecular networks and genetic variation impact these immune cell decisions.

The centre will look at immune health and the immune system from a whole-of-system, whole-of-person perspective.

The research program will decipher what factors give us good or poor immune health. The capacity to model these processes offers the promise of predictive immunology, to accelerate personalised diagnosis and treatment for people living with immune diseases and dysfunction.

We believe this unique approach has the potential to transform the way we think about our immune health.

Our vision for the future

Solving the immune mystery

To discover the essential molecules and cellular and molecular processes that govern immune cell decision-making to shed new light on what the factors that give us good or poor immune health.

Predictive immunology

To use this knowledge to accurately diagnose and predict a person’s risk of developing an immune disease.

Personalised treatment

To be able to tailor new therapies to the individual, to enable optimal immune functioning.

Proactive and preventative care

To use predictive immunology to drive a more proactive and preventative care to reduce the burden of immune-related disease.

A scientist is photographed working with a pipette
Vanessa Bryant, Phil Hodgkin and Charlotte Slade photographed in a laboratory

Doing science in a new way

The centre will focus on addressing the big questions in immune science.

It will integrate cutting-edge technologies and multidisciplinary teams of leading experts – including clinicians, mathematicians, engineers, geneticists and cell biologists from across the globe – to foster synergy and unprecedented diversity in thinking on the new science of immune health.

By creating new theories of immune health, testing and refining them with large new longitudinal datasets and sharing this knowledge we aim to break new ground with a collaborative ‘big-picture’ perspective.

It will translate discoveries made in the lab to benefits for patients at unparalleled scale and speed.

“A project that will truly change the way we treat disease,” Tom Snow, Chair, Snow Medical Research Foundation
Brighter together
Investing in excellence

Find out more

We invite you to have a conversation with us about how together we can maximise our impact and support the transformational Snow Centre for Immune Health.

Contact

Deborah Carr
Head of Philanthropy
M: 0400 724 853
E: carr.d@wehi.edu.au

 

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