Paul Hertzog

Prof Paul Hertzog is a research scientist with an interest in the molecular regulation of immune responses, particularly innate immunity. This encompasses cytokines such as interferons that are potent regulators of immune response to infection and cancer and regulate inflammation.  He leads a multidisciplinary research group that uses structural biology technologies, cell and molecular biology, functional genomics and bioinformatics.

Prof Hertzog's work has been supported by local and international funding agencies including NHMRC and NIH and has led to over 200 high impact publications including in Cell, Science and, Nature journals. In 2013, he was awarded the prestigious International Cytokine and Interferon Society’s Milstein Award for exceptional contributions to interferon and cytokine research, particularly the discovery and characterization of a new cytokine, interferon epsilon (IFNε) which is important in regulating mucosal immune responses in reproductive tract (Fung et al., Science 2013), exemplified by a Bill & Melinda Gates-funded project on its role in protection against HIV.

Another facet of Prof Hertzog's research program is the use of genomics and bioinformatics to understand gene regulatory networks and their ability to serve as biomarkers of disease. One important component of this is the establishment and curation of the Interferome database (Rusinova et al,m Nucl Acids Res 2013), a unique, open-access database of IFN responsive genes. This is a widely used resource with >4M hits, >300 citations, 2,000 regular users and instrumental in defining “IFN signatures” in autoimmune diseases such as SLE, infections such as M. tuberculosis and several cancers. His team has used this and related bioinformatics tools to identify IFN signatures important in HIV (Harman et al Blood., 2011), breast cancer metastases (Bidwell et al., Nat. Medicine, 2012) and inflammatory diseases (de Weerd et al., Nat. Immunology, 2013).