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Julia Archbold
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Monash University
Julia Archbold first showed an interest in structural biology and drug design as an undergraduate student at the University of Queensland. For her Honours year, she chose to pursue the structural biology field, under the guidance of Professor Jenny Martin at the then Centre for Drug Design and Development (now incorporated in the Institute for Molecular Biosciences). Here her project involved crystallisation of the enzyme phenylethanolamine N-methyltransferase that is involved in central nervous system diseases.
Subsequently, Julia worked as a research assistant for Natural Product Discovery, which is a collaboration between AstraZeneca and Griffith University (now known as the Eskitis Institute). She researched the use of natural products as potential therapeutics against a number of drug targets using high-throughput screening technologies and was involved in the identification of potent agonists from a marine sponge (recently published in the Journal of Natural Products).
After deciding to continue a career in protein crystallography, Julia moved to Melbourne in 2005 to begin a PhD in structural immunology under the supervision of Professor Jamie Rossjohn at Monash University. Her thesis investigates the structural basis of T cell alloreactivity, which contributes significantly to complications associated with organ transplant rejection. She has solved the crystal structures of some important peptide-MHC (major histocompatibility complex) complexes and T cell receptors. Structural analysis revealed that molecular mimicry between self and 'foreign' peptide-MHC complexes can explain the T cell alloreactivity in some alloresponses.
The ASBMB Fellowship will be used to attend the 'From Molecules to Medicine: Integrating Crystallography in Drug Design' course, to be held in Erice in May/June 2008.
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This page last modified: July 11, 2008.