Sarah Russell

Sarah Russell has been interested in how immune cells are regulated by intracellular signalling since she began her Ph.D. at the University of Melbourne in 1989. Her research was originally on signal transduction through the complement receptor, CD46, and through cytokines that use the common gamma chain. After a postdoctoral position from 1993-6 with Dr. Warren Leonard at the National Institutes of Health (USA), Sarah returned to Australia to establish a laboratory, first at the Austin Research Institute and then at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Her interest in the coordination of signal transduction role by intracellular localization led to her discovery that T cell shape and signalling is regulated by the highly conserved polarity network. Studying polarity in T cells presents technical challenges that require state-of-the-art imaging technologies, and to facilitate this Sarah started a second laboratory at the Centre For Micro-Photonics, Swinburne University of Technology. With these approaches Sarah is currently exploring the role of the polarity proteins, and of asymmetric cell division, in T cell development, function and fate determination.