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I am a Senior Research Fellow, NHMRC Emerging Leader Fellow, and Group Leader at UQ Frazer Institute. I was awarded my PhD in late 2017 by Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Monash University. Under the UQ Health Research Accelerator (HERA) program, I lead a team to investigate T and B cell responses that profoundly regulate vaccine responses, viral clearance, and anti-tumour immunity.

My research program employs combinatorial methodologies of Biochemistry and Immunology to uncover new molecular mechanisms controlling T-cell-mediated immunity:

1. The action of T cells is required in antibody responses for suppressing viral infection or tumour growth and to confer protection upon vaccination. In particular, follicular helper T (Tfh) cells, a specialised subset of CD4+ T cells, essentially instruct the B cells to produce long-lived antibody protection. The knowledge of Tfh cells has fundamentally enabled vaccine development and therapy design for autoimmune diseases.

2. T-cell-derived cytokines play pivotal roles in both humoral and cellular immunity. Particularly, interleukin-21 (IL-21) is essential for supporting germinal centre (GC) reaction, where the B cell memory and long-lived antibody responses are generated. Besides, IL-21 is also the only known cytokine to maintain the functionalities of CD8+ T cells in the context of chronic infections or cancers by preventing a loss-of-function program termed 'exhaustion'.

This research program has generated multiple cutting-edge discoveries in the field, producing publications as 1st or joint 1st authors in top-tier journals including Nature Immunology, Science Immunology, and Nature Communications.

Dr Jenny Fung is a senior postdoctoral research fellow and lecturer of pharmacology course at the School of Biomedical Sciences (SBMS), UQ. She is an emerging researcher in the reproductive disease field with experience in molecular biology techniques, genetics, functional genomics, statistical and high-throughput computational skills, ex-vivo and in-vivo models of diseases, as well as industry engagement. In 2013, she was awarded a PhD at UQ and continued post-doctoral research in Professor Grant Montgomery's laboratory at QIMRB and IMB, in the field of genetics and genomics with a focus on functional genomics studies in complex diseases and a special interest in endometriosis. Her research has led to the seminal publication identifying the genetics of gene expression in endometrium and the role of gene regulation underlying endometriosis-related pathogenesis. In 2019, she joined Professor Trent Woodruff’s laboratory at SBMS, UQ to work on immunotherapy development for cancer through funding from Pfizer, where she performed immune cell functional assays and genomics analyses. Dr Fung is in a unique position to perform both the wet and dry lab components of multi-disciplinary research. She is currently co-leading multiple projects, where she is contributing her expertise on genetics and functional genomics on immunology to discover target genes and putative pathways underlying disease progression, with an ultimate goal to develop potential effective drugs for reproductive and brain disorders.