Meet the research leader in allergy and genetic immunology
Professor Antonio Ferrante BSc PhD, FRCPath FFSc(RCPA)
Professor Ferrante is the leader of the Allergy and Genetic Immunology Stream at the Children's Research Centre and Head of Immunopathology at SA Pathology, based at the Women's and Children's Hospital. He is also a Professor in the Discipline of Paediatrics at the University of Adelaide.
Professor Ferrante's work in inflammation, biomarkers and therapeutics over the last 25 years has led to new methods of diagnosing primary immunodeficiency diseases at the cellular, protein and molecular level. His research group was one of the first to pioneer cytokine and cytokine receptor mimetics and use this to overcome the major setbacks of present cytokine/anti-cytokine therapy.
Importantly, he has helped create novel omega 3 polyunsaturated fatty acid analogues for the treatment of inflammatory conditions, and is currently investigating the medicinal potential of omega-3 fatty acids in the treatment of diabetes, obesity, arthritis, cystic fibrosis and respiratory illness.
One of his recent achievements includes the use of protein kinase C zeta as a predictor of allergy risk in babies. This has led to the development of a prenatal allergy test to identify a baby's predisposition to inflammatory disease, and a new method of altering a baby's protein levels to prevent allergies from manifesting in later life.
