Barry Slobedman

Biography

Associate Professor Barry Slobedman obtained both a BSc (with Honours) and a PhD in molecular virology from the University of Adelaide before moving to Stanford University (USA) where he trained as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Stanford University Medical Center in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. He returned to Australia as a Rolf Edgar Lake Fellow and established an independent research group in 2000.

Research Interest

Associate Professor Barry Slobedman is head of the Cytomegalovirus (CMV) Research Group. Human CMV is a herpesvirus which infects a vast majority of the world¿s population, where it is a leading cause of opportunistic and congenital disease. Primary productive infection leads to a lifelong latent infection that is characterised by maintenance of the viral genome without infectious virus production. Periodically, the virus reactivates from latency and is shed in bodily secretions. Whilst primary and reactivated infections are usually mild or asymptomatic in healthy adults, primary infection is a major cause of serious congenital infection leading to still birth or neurological damage in children and reactivated infection is a major cause of life-threatening disease in immunosuppressed individuals, such as those with HIV AIDS and in allogeneic stem cell and solid organ transplant recipients.