Prof Ian Frazer
Born: 1953, Glasgow, Scotland
Ian Frazer trained as a physician, specialising in immunology, at Edinburgh University. He emigrated to Melbourne in 1980 to research viral immunology at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, and moved to Queensland in 1985.
Professor Frazer founded the University of Queensland’s Centre for Immunology and Cancer Research, now the Diamantina Institute at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane. He is best known for his work on the development of a cervical cancer vaccine to protect women from Human papillomavirus (HPV). Two versions of the vaccine – Gardasil and Cervarix – are now on the market and two others, to treat people already infected with HPV, are being trialled. Eighty per cent of Australian secondary schoolgirls have been vaccinated with Gardasil and cervical cancer vaccines are now increasingly part of children’s vaccination programs around the world.
Professor Frazer is a director of a biotechnology start up company, Coridon, president of the Cancer Council of Australia and chair of the Australian Cancer Research Foundation’s Medical Research Advisory Committee. He also advises the WHO and the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation on papillomavirus vaccines and teaches immunology to undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Queensland.
Career highlights
1999: Australian Biotechnology Award
1999: Business/Higher Education Round Table award for Collabo
2005: Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science
2005: John Curtin Medal
2006: Australian of the Year
2006: Distinguished Fellowship Award, Royal College of Pathologists
2006: William B. Coley Award (with Harald zur Hausen), Cancer Research Institute, New York
2007: Howard Florey Medal for biomedical research
2007: International Life Award for Scientific Research
2007: Novartis Prize for Clinical Immunology, Rio de Janeiro
2007: Clunies Ross Award, Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering
2008: Balzan Prize
2008: Prime Minister’s Prize for Science
2009: Australian Medical Association Gold Medal
More by and about Ian Frazer
Sydney Morning Herald, ‘One mall jab but a giant leap for womankind’, August 2006, http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/one-small-jab-but-a-giant-leap-for-womankind/2006/08/28/1156617275315.html
Australian of the Year 2006, Ian Frazer, http://www.australianoftheyear.org.au/pages/page58.asp
ABC TV Catalyst, ‘Meeting Ian Frazer’, http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1871847.htm
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Frazer
www.acrf.com.au/page/bio_prof_ian_frazer.html
www.uq.edu.au/uqresearchers/researcher/frazerih.html
