Prof Alex Loukas

Alex Loukas is a professorial research fellow at James Cook University in northern Australia and an NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow. Loukas’ research focuses on the secretomes of parasitic helminths and their utility as: (1) subunit vaccines for blood-feeding human helminths, and (2) a platform for development of novel therapeutics for treating allergic and autoimmune diseases resulting from a dysregulated immune system. Loukas’ group is particularly interested in discovery of hookworm proteins (and more recently, vesicular miRNAs) that suppress inflammatory responses, and undertaking pre-clinical and clinical development of lead products in collaboration with pharma companies to develop next generation therapeutics for inflammatory bowel diseases and other autoimmune disorders. Loukas’ research is funded by NHMRC, NIH (US), Australian Research Council, various foundations and multinational pharmaceutical companies. He is a US-Australia Fulbright senior scholar (fellowship at University of California Irvine) and deputy editor of International Journal for Parasitology (was Editor-in-Chief 2009-15).