Bio-bibliography

Australia/UK

Ian Frazer

Balzan Prize 2008 for Preventive Medicine, Including Vaccination

For his outstanding scientific achievement and lasting contribution to preventive medicine through his role in the development of a vaccine that promises to prevent virus-induced carcinoma of the cervix, which claims 250,000 lives every year.

IAN HECTOR FRAZER, born in Glasgow, Scotland, on 6 January 1953, is an Australian citizen.

He is Director of the Diamantina Institute for Cancer, Immunology and Metabolic Medicine, a research centre of the University of Queensland at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

Ian Frazer earned his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and an M.D. degree from the University of Melbourne, Australia. He was trained as a renal physician and clinical immunologist in Edinburgh before emigrating in 1981 to Melbourne to pursue studies in viral immunology and autoimmunity at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. In 1985 he moved to Brisbane to take up a teaching post at the University of Queensland.

He is president of the Cancer Council Australia and a member of the Australian Medical Research Advisory Committee, and advises the World Health Organization on papillomavirus vaccines.

In 2005, Dr. Frazer was awarded the Australian Museum CSIRO Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science, which is awarded to an Australian individual who has demonstrated an outstanding role and impact in science leadership. In 2006 he received the Cancer Research Institute’s William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology along with Harald zur Hausen. Also in 2006, he was named Queenslander of the Year, and Australian of the Year.

Among his publications we mention:

– Zhou J, Sun XY, Stenzel DJ, Frazer IH (1991), “Expression of vaccinia recombinant HPV 16 L1 and L2 ORF proteins in epithelial cells is sufficient for assembly of HPV viron-like particles”. Virology, 185(1):251-7

– Frazer IH (2004) “Prevention of cervical cancer through papillomavirus vaccination”. Nat. Rev. Immunol., 4(1):46-54.