Rate My Professor Vicki Lawson

Associate Professor Vicki Lawson is an esteemed researcher in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, School of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She obtained her Bachelor of Science with Honours and PhD in 1999 from the University of Melbourne, with her doctoral thesis focusing on HIV-1 transmission and pathogenesis. After completing her PhD, she received a postdoctoral fellowship and joined the University in 2003, initially in the Department of Pathology, where she served as Deputy Head from 2014 to 2017. She now heads the Lawson Laboratory on transmissible neurodegeneration and holds an adjunct position at the Doherty Institute.

Lawson's research centers on the pathogenesis of transmissible neurodegenerative diseases affecting the central nervous system and enteric nervous system, including prion diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, prion-like synucleinopathies like Parkinson’s disease, viral neuroinvasion by SARS-CoV-2 variants, and prion protein involvement in cancers like colorectal cancer and glioblastoma. Her lab employs in vivo, in vitro, and cell-free models to study strain variations in invasion, neuroinflammation, and disease progression, aiming to develop diagnostics, treatments, and preventive strategies. She collaborates with the Australian Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Registry, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, and Department of Microbiology and Immunology colleagues. Notable awards include the NHMRC Training Fellowship (#567123) and University of Melbourne CR Roper Fellowship (2008-2011). Key publications feature "Distribution of microRNA profiles in pre-clinical and clinical forms of murine and human prion disease" (2021), "Strain variation in treatment and prevention of human prion diseases" (2020), "Markers of A1 astrocytes stratify to molecular sub-types in sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease brain" (2020), "The brain to gut pathway: a possible route of prion transmission" (2010), and "Genomic structure of an attenuated quasi species of HIV-1 from a blood transfusion donor and recipients" (1995). Her work has garnered thousands of citations and influenced understanding of post-acute COVID-19 sequelae, as highlighted in ABC Radio National interviews.