Professor Katie Flanagan
The Launceston General Hospital’s Head of Infectious Diseases, Professor Katie Flanagan is a clinical scientist who has worked on global health issues for more than 20 years.
Professor Flanagan trained in undergraduate medicine at the University of Oxford and in London, United Kingdom. She has since led numerous vaccine immunology trials throughout the world, including trials of novel malaria and HIV vaccines in Africa, and trials of the immunological effects of commonly used vaccines in the young and elderly.
In 2011 she moved to Tasmania, where she set up the Clinical Infectious Disease service at the Launceston General Hospital. In 2016 she also established the Tasmanian Vaccine Trial Centre, conducting vaccine and infectious disease trials in the state’s North.
She remains at the forefront of Australia’s fight against COVID-19, as member of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation. She also helped lead the Australasian COVID-19 Trial, known as ASCOT, testing the effectiveness of HIV medication lopinavir-ritonavir, and malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, in treating patients hospitalised with coronavirus.
Most recently Professor Flanagan was awarded $360,000 from the Clifford Craig Foundation for the COVULPOP study, which will quantify and compare vaccine-induced humoral and cellular immune responses to COVID-19 vaccination between pregnant women and the elderly.
The Clifford Craig Foundation has supported numerous research projects from Professor Flanagan including:
• Understanding immunity to influenza in children (2019). Collaboration with Professor Katherine Kedzierska, Peter Doherty Institute, University of Melbourne.
• VITAL: Vaccine Immunomodulation Throughout the Aging Lifespan (2016-2019). Collaboration with Professor Magdalena Plebanski at RMIT, Melbourne.
• Defining the gut microbiota in Tasmanian older adults (2018). Collaboration with Ass. Prof Raj Eri, University of Tasmania.
• The immunological mechanisms behind the beneficial protective effects of BCG vaccination against non-tuberculous infections (2013). Collaboration with Professor Nigel Curtis, Royal Children’s Hospital and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne.