Professor Jonathan Sprent

After a PhD at the Walter Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne and post-doctoral positions in Switzerland and UK, Professor Jonathan Sprent worked for 30 years in the USA, first at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and then at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego.

During this time he worked on many aspects of T cell biology, including T-B collaboration during antibody production, role of T cells in graft-versus host disease after bone marrow transplantation, positive and negative selection during T cell differentiation in the thymus, T cell survival and homeostasis of mature T cells, construction of artificial antigen-presenting cells (APC) from insect cells, and the use of monoclonal antibodies (mAb) to enhance and target the activity of IL-2 and other cytokines.

Jonathan moved from the USA in 2006 to form a research group at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research where he has continued to work on T cell differentiation and function. The lab is supported by several NHMRC grants and has collaborative interactions with many other investigators, both nationally and internationally.