Associate Professor Christine Wells (NHMRC CDA)

Associate Professor Christine Wells is a Group Leader at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, where she is researching the networks of genes that drive innate immune cell activation.

She has discovered the function of several genes involved in the fight against infection, and which regulate inflammation.

Gene products provide cells with the ability to detect and respond to environmental events, and networks of gene products predispose the outcome of those events.

As most diseases are the consequence of genetic predisposition and external factors, the group wants to be able to predict who might be vulnerable, track the course of a disease, and predict the best therapeutic outcomes.

To do this, the group works across methods in genome biology, bioinformatics, as well as cell and molecular biology.

The Wells group has an active gene discovery program in macrophages, and are building new bioinformatic tools for the analysis of genetic networks.

They work with collaborators at the Dana Farber Cancer Research Institute and the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston to develop new statistical methods and philosophical approaches, with the aim of improving the predictive nature of genomic data.

Publications by Christine Wells

More information about Christine Wells