AUSTRALIA
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research

Douglas Hilton was born in the United Kingdom in 1964 and migrated to Australia with his family in 1970 where he grew up in the idyllic outer suburb of Warrandyte, in the lower Yarra Valley, just north east of Melbourne.

He was educated at Warrandyte Primary School and East Doncaster High School, where he recalls being inspired by “a fabulous biology teacher”. As a 19-year-old Monash University undergraduate, Hilton was introduced to the amazing world of blood cells when he spent the summer holidays in Ian Young’s laboratory at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra. In his Honours year and as a PhD student, Hilton worked at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute with two giants of molecular haematology, Professors Don Metcalf and Nicos Nicola, to purify and patent a messenger protein called LIF, which is used by laboratories around the world to culture mouse embryonic stem cells.

After his PhD, Professor Hilton spent two formative years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with Professor Harvey Lodish. During this time, he worked on trying to understand how the dedicated receptor on the surface of red blood cells recognises the hormone erythropoietin (EPO), famous for its clinical use in patients with renal failure and infamous for its illicit use by athletes.

Since returning to Australia in 1993, Professor Hilton has continued his research at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute on communication between cells, discovering several hormone receptors and an entirely novel family of STOP signals named the Suppressors of Cytokine Signaling proteins or SOCS proteins. In recent years, together with Professor Warren Alexander and Dr. Benjamin Kile, Professor Hilton has established a new program using large-scale mouse genetics and genomics to identify which of the 30,000 genes in the genome regulate blood cell formation. The purpose of the program is to identify targets for the development of new medicines.

Professor Hilton has received many prizes and awards for his contribution to medical research, including the Amgen Medical Researcher Award, the inaugural Commonwealth Health Minister’s Award for Excellence in Health and Medical Research and the GlaxoSmithKline Australia Award for Research Excellence. In 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and currently serves on this organisation’s council. In 2010 he was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.

Throughout his career, Professor Hilton has been actively involved in the application of research through collaboration with industry. He is an inventor on more than 20 patent families, most of which have been licensed. He co-founded the biotechnology company Murigen Therapeutics, a company developing treatments for inflammatory diseases, cancer, thrombocytopenia and thalessemia and actively collaborates with CSL, a company focused on human health with more than 90 years experience in the development and manufacture of vaccines and plasma protein biotherapies.

In addition to his scientific achievements and accomplishments, Professor Hilton has been very active in promoting science and research to young people. He was a key speaker at many Future Leaders Forums in which several hundred high-achieving secondary school students are exposed to leaders in many walks-of-life. He has been a scientist in residence at secondary schools and is a member of curriculum committee of the Gene Technology Access Centre (GTAC), which was established by the Victorian Government to promote excellence and innovation in secondary science education.Professor Hilton also piloted and established Australia’s most successful program to provide tertiary science students with a taste of life as researcher. Based on the eponymous MIT program started in 1969, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) pairs talented second and third year tertiary students to the laboratories of first class researchers, where they are given their own research project. Since its inception in 1998, when one student worked in his lab, the Program has expanded into five states, involves all of Australia’ s leading medical research institutions and has provided initial research experiences to hundreds of students, most of whom have gone on to PhDs.

Professor Hilton became the sixth director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in its 95-year history on 1 July 2009. The Institute is affiliated with The University of Melbourne and The Royal Melbourne Hospital and offers postgraduate training in the Department of Medical Biology of The University of Melbourne. Professor Hilton serves as Professor and Head of the Department of Medical Biology at the University of Melbourne He continues to live in Warrandyte with his wife Adrienne, sons Josh and Zeph, and their Kelpie, Jessie.

Given that more than a very large number of communicable diseases affecting humans around the world are caused by viruses—and given the indispensable purpose that interferon plays in induction of antiviral responses, there is no question that it is critically important to continue to probe and investigate the nature of the interferon system and its role in innate immunity.

The Milstein Awards annually honor individuals who have made exceptional contributions to research related to interferons—either in a basic or clinical field. For many years, The Milstein Awards have represented the pinnacle of scientific achievement in the field of interferon research.

The Milstein Awards are presented each year during a special event at the annual meeting of the International Society for Interferon and Cytokine Research (ISICR), a non-profit organization of  scientists from across the globe.  ISICR was formed over 25 years ago to advance interferon and cytokine research by promoting the exchange of knowledge through meetings, seminars, reports and publications and by initiating and participating in programs related to interferon and cytokine research.

The Milstein Awards for 2011 were presented during this year’ s annual meeting in Florence, Italy.

Sincerely,

Leonidas C. Platanias, MD, PhD
Deputy Director, Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University;
Professor of Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University

₁ | J. E. Darnell Jr., Laboratory of Molecular Cell Biology, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY  (Interferon: The 50th Anniversary, 2007)

Research Fellow

Department of Microbiology
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
New York, New York  USA

Dr.Versteeg’s current research focuses on the 70+ member family of TRIM proteins. A few TRIM proteins had already been implicated in antiviral defense and innate immunity. However, by cloning and subsequent systematic analysis of all 75 human TRIMs, Dr.Versteeg has demonstrated that nearly half of them positively regulate innate immune responses. Subsequent knock-down analysis in non-immune cells and primary dendritic cells showed that most TRIM proteins function in different parts of the innate immune cascade and some of them are cell type specific. This work demonstrated for the first time such a prodigious dedication of a large protein family to the regulation of innate antiviral responses and supports the notion that many human TRIM proteins rapidly evolved and expanded as part of the innate immune system.

Dr. Versteeg has had a long-standing interest in investigating how viruses interact with their hosts and negate their innate immune responses. His bachelor’s work under the supervision of Dr. Willy Spaan at Leiden University (The Netherlands) focused on identify ing markers in hepatitis C virus that could predict the outcome of treatment with ribavirin and interferon. His master’s studies were conducted in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Sarnow at Stanford University and concentrated on translation regulation by cricket paralysis virus. In 2008, Dr. Versteeg received his Ph.D. from Leiden University after studying how coronaviruses regulate innate immune responses.

Following the unifying theme of virus-host interactions, Dr. Versteeg joined the group of Dr. Adolfo García-Sastre at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York in 2008. Here he has identified and characterized small-molecules that activate antiviral host responses, a report of which was recently accepted for publication in Nature Chemical Biology.

Senior Fellow

Department of Immunology
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington  USA

Dr. Suthar is currently applying an innovative systems biology approach to understand the complex and dynamic signaling networks that control innate immunity to virus infection.Using a combination of high-throughput technology, computational analysis, and pathway-specific modeling, these studies are aimed at revealing tissue and cell-specific gene regulatory signaling networks and antiviral effector genes that control virus infection and regulate innate antiviral immunity.

Dr. Mehul Suthar received his Ph.D. in 2007 in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill under the supervision of Dr. Mark Heise. Dr. Suthar’s graduate research focused on defining the molecular determinants of alphavirus pathogenesis.  Through these studies, he identified an important virulence determinant that regulates induction of type I interferon responses of the infected cell.

Dr. Suthar continued on with his interests in studying viral pathogenesis and is currently a Senior Fellow in the Department of Immunology at the University of Washington School of Medicine in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Gale, Jr.  His research has focused on defining the host innate immune response programs that control West Nile virus infection. His recent work, now published in PLoS Pathogens, demonstrated the importance of the RIG-I like receptor (RLR) signaling pathway in eliciting effective and integrated innate and adaptive immune responses to WNV infection. The key findings from this study demonstrate that: 1) RLR signaling through IPS-1 is required for triggering an innate response to WNV in the key target cells of infection; and 2) loss of RLR signaling causes dysregulation of cell-mediated and humoral adaptive immune responses, characterized by uncontrolled expansion of virus-specific CD8+ T cells, reduced T-regulatory cells, and altered humoral immunity. This study revealed that the RLR signaling pathway mediates an important interface in coordinating innate and adaptive immunity against viral infection by regulating both the quantity and quality of the immune response. Dr. Suthar has continued to study the role of the RLR pathway in directing immunity to WNV infection, focusing on the roles of each RLR within the RLR family, including RIG-I, MDA5, and LGP2.  In addition, Dr. Suthar has published a number of collaborative studies describing the role of innate immune signaling factors, including IRF-1, IRF-3, IRF-5, IRF-7, TLR3, MyD88, and NOS2, in regulating WNV infection and immunity.

Research Assistant Professor

Department of Immunology
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington  USA

Dr. Loo’s current research is focused on understanding the mechanisms by which RNA viruses trigger and control innate immune signaling through the RIG-I-like receptors and MAVS. A major focus of her studies is to define novel antiviral targets for the development of effective immunotherapies to control virus infection.

Dr. Yueh-Ming (Ming) Loo received her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the State University of New York at Buffalo where her training with Thomas Melendy focused on virus-host interactions required for papillomavirus DNA replication. She pursued her post-doctoral training with Dr.Michael Gale Jr. at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, where she identified MAVS as the target for immune regulation by the hepatitis C virus (HCV), a human pathogen of global public health concern.Her studies showed that HCV expresses a protease NS3/4A that specifically targets MAVS for proteolytic cleavage and abrogates interferon production, thus allowing the virus to evade the host innate immune response to establish chronic infection. Importantly, she showed that NS3/4A-specific protease inhibitors not only rescued MAVS from cleavage, but further restored interferon production and the innate antiviral response in infected cells, providing strong evidence identifying MAVS as a potential therapeutic target for the prevention of HCV infection. Additionally, Dr. Loo has contributed to numerous studies characterizing the innate immune signaling action of RIG-I-like receptors and signaling regulation by pathogenic viruses.

Dr. Loo was previously a recipient of the Christina Fleischmann Award, sponsored by the International Society of Interferon and Cytokine Research (ISICR). She has co-authored several scientific publications, including a book chapter describing the mechanisms by which RNA viruses regulate host innate immune defenses, and a review on signaling by the RIG-I-like receptors. She is currently a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology at the University of Washington.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics
University of Aarhus
Aarhus, Denmark

Dr. Hamming’s current research focuses on understanding cytokine stability, proper membrane localization and signaling.  He is especially interested in finding ways to use structural information to answer questions about the function and signaling of cytokines.

Dr. Hamming received his Ph.D. in 2011 from the Department of Molecular Biology (now the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics) at the University Of Aarhus, Denmark. Working in the group of Associate Professor Rune Hartmann, Dr.Hamming’s main focus was the structure and function of interferons (IFN), particularly IFN lambda. He participated in solving the structure of IFN lambda and usedthe structural information to address the mechanism behind activation of the IFN lambda receptor complex and subsequent cellular signaling. He solved the structure of zebra fish IFN omega 1 and IFN omega 2, and used the structural information to conclusively demonstrate that zebra fish interferons are closely related to mammalian type I interferons. H is work demonstrated that type I IFN is a monophylogenetic family from telost fish and upwards.

Following his doctoral training, Dr. Hamming remained in the Hartmann laboratory in order to complete a highly interesting study on the involvement of sugars in the structure and function of class I cytokine receptors. He solved the crystal structure of IL-21 bound to the extracellular domain of IL-21R1. In this structure, a sugar chain bridging the two domains of the IL-21R1 is clearly seen. Interestingly this sugar connects with the highly conserved class I cytokine receptor motif (WSXWS).

Senior Fellow

Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute
Cleveland, Ohio  USA

Dr. Fensterl’s research is focused on investigating cellular functions of the ISG56/Ifit1 family of genes. In mammals, these genes are strongly induced after exposure to interferons or viruses, and antiviral functions of their protein products begin to be uncovered.  Dr. Fensterl is using various ISG56 family gene knock-out mice to identify novel antiviral activities of the family member ISG54 and he has discovered that, although ubiquitously inducible in the mouse, an interferon-induced gene may exert its antiviral function in an organ-specific manner.

Dr. Fensterl graduated in virology/microbiology at the Institute of Virology, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany in 2002.He continued his work in the field of innate immunity in the lab of Prof. Dr. Angelika Vallbracht by examining how hepatitis A virus suppresses the induction of interferons, and received his doctoral degree in the natural sciences (Doctor rerum naturalium) from University of Bremen in 2006.In 2006, Dr. Fensterl took up his current postdoctoral fellow position at Lerner Research Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, USA in the lab of Dr. Ganes C. Sen.

Senior Fellow

Laboratory of Experimental Immunology
National Cancer Institute-Frederick
Frederick, Maryland  USA

Dr. Ram Savan received his Ph.D. in 2004 from the United Graduate School of Agriculture Sciences, Kagoshima University, Japan under Dr. Masahiro Sakai where he discovered that fish contain 2 interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) genes. Dr. Savan is currently a Senior Fellow in the Laboratory of Experimental Immunology, Cancer and Inflammation Program, National Cancer Institute, NIH in Dr.Howard Young’s laboratory. His research is focused on the post-transcriptional regulation of immune genes. He has defined a novel role for microRNAs (miRNAs) in stabilizing IFN-gamma mRNA based on changes in the mRNA structure upon interaction with the miRNA. This finding represents a new mechanism of action of miRNAs in regulating gene expression.  He also defined the role of miRNAs in controlling HLA-C gene expression in collaboration with Dr. Mary Carrington’s laboratory. This work on HLA-C has broad implications for the differential susceptibility of individuals to HIV and psoriatic arthritis. Another area of his research interest has been in defining the importance of IL-22 receptor expression in the pathogenesis of ALK+ anaplastic large cell lymphoma. He was a recipient of the Japanese Society for Promotionof Science research fellowship. Additionally, Dr. Savan is a two time recipient of the National Cancer Institute Director’s Innovation Award (2009-2010).

AUSTRALIA
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research

Douglas Hilton was born in the United Kingdom in 1964 and migrated to Australia with his family in 1970 where he grew up in the idyllic outer suburb of Warrandyte, in the lower Yarra Valley, just north east of Melbourne.

He was educated at Warrandyte Primary School and East Doncaster High School, where he recalls being inspired by “a fabulous biology teacher”. As a 19-year-old Monash University undergraduate, Hilton was introduced to the amazing world of blood cells when he spent the summer holidays in Ian Young’s laboratory at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra. In his Honours year and as a PhD student, Hilton worked at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute with two giants of molecular haematology, Professors Don Metcalf and Nicos Nicola, to purify and patent a messenger protein called LIF, which is used by laboratories around the world to culture mouse embryonic stem cells.

After his PhD, Professor Hilton spent two formative years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with Professor Harvey Lodish. During this time, he worked on trying to understand how the dedicated receptor on the surface of red blood cells recognises the hormone erythropoietin (EPO), famous for its clinical use in patients with renal failure and infamous for its illicit use by athletes.

Since returning to Australia in 1993, Professor Hilton has continued his research at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute on communication between cells, discovering several hormone receptors and an entirely novel family of STOP signals named the Suppressors of Cytokine Signaling proteins or SOCS proteins. In recent years, together with Professor Warren Alexander and Dr. Benjamin Kile, Professor Hilton has established a new program using large-scale mouse genetics and genomics to identify which of the 30,000 genes in the genome regulate blood cell formation. The purpose of the program is to identify targets for the development of new medicines.

Professor Hilton has received many prizes and awards for his contribution to medical research, including the Amgen Medical Researcher Award, the inaugural Commonwealth Health Minister’s Award for Excellence in Health and Medical Research and the GlaxoSmithKline Australia Award for Research Excellence. In 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and currently serves on this organisation’s council. In 2010 he was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.

Throughout his career, Professor Hilton has been actively involved in the application of research through collaboration with industry. He is an inventor on more than 20 patent families, most of which have been licensed. He co-founded the biotechnology company Murigen Therapeutics, a company developing treatments for inflammatory diseases, cancer, thrombocytopenia and thalessemia and actively collaborates with CSL, a company focused on human health with more than 90 years experience in the development and manufacture of vaccines and plasma protein biotherapies.

In addition to his scientific achievements and accomplishments, Professor Hilton has been very active in promoting science and research to young people. He was a key speaker at many Future Leaders Forums in which several hundred high-achieving secondary school students are exposed to leaders in many walks-of-life. He has been a scientist in residence at secondary schools and is a member of curriculum committee of the Gene Technology Access Centre (GTAC), which was established by the Victorian Government to promote excellence and innovation in secondary science education. Professor Hilton also piloted and established Australia’s most successful program to provide tertiary science students with a taste of life as researcher. Based on the eponymous MIT program started in 1969, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) pairs talented second and third year tertiary students to the laboratories of first class researchers, where they are given their own research project. Since its inception in 1998, when one student worked in his lab, the Program has expanded into five states, involves all of Australia’s leading medical research institutions and has provided initial research experiences to hundreds of students, most of whom have gone on to PhDs.

Professor Hilton became the sixth director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in its 95-year history on 1 July 2009.  The Institute is affiliated with The University of Melbourne and The Royal Melbourne Hospital and offers postgraduate training in the Department of Medical Biology of The University of Melbourne.  Professor Hilton serves as Professor and Head of the Department of Medical Biology at the University of Melbourne   He continues to live in Warrandyte with his wife Adrienne, sons Josh and Zeph, and their Kelpie, Jessie.

CANADA
University of Toronto, Department of Immunology

Dr. Eleanor Fish is Senior Scientist and Head of the Division of Cellular & Molecular Biology at Toronto General Research Institute.Dr. Fish is being h onored for her distinguished career characterized by sustained, high-quality science focused on the role of interferons in viral defense and clinical infections.As an example, she performed cutting-edge translational studies during the response to the SARS coronavirus outbreak in 2003, which were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).