Professor Vasso Apostolopoulos

Vasso Leads the Immunology & Translational Research Group. She is also the Program Director, Immunology, at the Australian Institute for Musculoskeletal Science

Her expertise is multi-disciplinary with extensive expertise in immunology, x-ray crystallography, medicinal chemistry, cellular biology, clinical & translational research with development of drugs and vaccines. Vasso was a Chief Scientific Officer for 4Gvaccines, is on the board and consults for pharmaceutical companies worldwide, and is the Director of VAConsulting. She has undertaken research in various capacities at Oxford University, Scripps Research Institute USA, Mater Institute Qld, ANU Canberra, University of Melbourne. She was head of the Immunology & Vaccine Unit at the Austin Research Institute and at the Burnet Institute; the Immunology Program Leader in the Centre for Chronic Disease at VU; was the Mechanisms and Interventions in Health and Disease Program Leader at VU. In 2018-2022 she was part of the senior executive team being the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research, Associate Provost and Pro Vice-Chancellor, Research Partnerships.

Vasso is a world-renowned researcher who has been recognised with >100 awards including the Premier’s Award for Medical Research, Young Australian of the Year (Vic), Greek Australian of the Year, Woman of the Year. She was named one of the most successful Greeks abroad by the prestigious Times magazine. Vasso was the first to develop a method of immunotherapy to stimulate the immune system in the early 1990s, which today is used by hundreds of labs around the world. These studies led to >25 phase I, II, III human trials of vaccine formulations for breast & ovarian cancer which attracted investment by pharma. Of note, one of the studies now has long-term follow-up data showing that 25 years later those injected with the vaccine remain cancer free.

Committed to the benefits of immunotherapy, Vasso has applied several immunotherapies to other diseases including MS, diabetes, drug addiction, Alzheimer’s’ disease. Vasso’s research is also working on understanding mechanisms and developing interventions for cancer, mental health, diabetes, chronic diseases, infectious diseases, autoimmunity, using vaccines, drugs, natural bio-active compounds or via physical activity / exercise. She is committed to driving her research and programs to help people age healthy.

In response to the current global COVID emergency, a global consortia was developed which includes researchers from Europe, USA, Canada and Australia investigating and working on vaccines and drugs to treat the virus.

Vasso has published over 500 research papers, is an inventor on 20 patents, has supervised >70 Hons MSc PhD students and has received >$63.5M in research funds