Professor Matthew Cook

He is an academic physician with expertise in immunology and human genomics, a professorial fellow at ANU, and Genzyme Professor of Experimental Medicine at the University of Cambridge.

Professor Cook has more than 20 years of experience using genetic analysis to elucidate the pathogenesis of human immunology. He has served on various national advisory groups, including Project Reference Group of Human Genomics, and the Biological committee of the Therapeutics Goods Administration.

He has published more than 100 papers, including in Nature, Immunity, Journal of Experimental Medicine and Science Immunology. He has been chief investigator on numerous NHMRC project grants and three NHMRC program grants.

At JCSMR, he leads a group that investigates the mechanisms of human immune disease with a view to improving the accuracy of diagnosis and specificity of treatment. It studies immune deficiency diseases, which predispose patients to potentially life-threatening infections, as well as disorders of immune regulation, including autoimmune diseases such as lupus, myositis and sarcoidosis. The group’s approach is to characterise variation in human genomes using whole genome sequencing, and functional analysis of those variants in patients, and accurate models of disease.