Dr Angela Fontaine-Titley

Dr. Angela Fontaine-Titley has been performing intravital microscopy since 2011, applying it across a wide range of disease models, including inflammation, primary immunodeficiency, bacterial infection and cancer.

After graduating with distinction from Paris Lodron University Salzburg, Austria, with an MSc in Genetics specialising in Molecular Biology, with a strong focus on immunology & cancer, Dr. Angela Fontaine-Titley moved to Germany to join the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried as a Research Associate, working with Dr. Guido Posern and Prof. Axel Ullrich on differential transcriptional regulation in distinct modes of cell motility in breast cancer. She then undertook her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Markus Sperandio at the Walter Brendel Centre of Experimental Medicine, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), within the DFG Collaborative Research Centre SFB 914 “Trafficking of Immune Cells in Inflammation, Development and Disease”, where she also served as student speaker for the SFB’s Integrated Research Training Group (IRTG 914). Using intravital imaging, she uncovered a novel role for MST1 in neutrophils, explaining why a rare human primary immunodeficiency so severely affects both the innate and adaptive immune systems. This work, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation in 2016, earned her the ESM-Servier Award in Microcirculation in 2017.

During her PhD, she was awarded a lab exchange to Brazil in 2013 through TARKINAID (“Targeting Src-family tyrosine kinases in chronic autoimmune and inflammatory diseases”), a European Union FP7 collaborative project uniting eleven partner institutions across six countries to build a research network between European and Brazilian immunologists. She joined the laboratory of Hugo Caire de Castro-Faria-Neto at Fundação Oswaldo Cruz in Rio de Janeiro to model acute and chronic inflammatory diseases in vivo, and presented her work at the World Congress on Inflammation in Natal, Brazil.

In 2017, Dr. Angela Fontaine-Titley moved to Sydney on a DFG Research Fellowship to further her expertise in intravital microscopy, investigating immune evasion by Group A Streptococcus in the laboratory of Prof. Wolfgang Weninger at the Centenary Institute.

At Garvan, Dr. Angela Fontaine-Titley was co-lead, together with Deborah Barkauskas, of the ACRF-funded Intravital Imaging of Niches for Cancer Immune Therapy (INCITe) Centre, applying intravital imaging to transform the way cancer is treated. INCITe now sits within Garvan’s Imaging Platform, headed by Deborah Barkauskas.