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Thursday May 15, 2025

Congratulations to Yomani Sarathkumara
2024 ASI Postdoctoral Travel Awardee

We warmly congratulate
Yomani Sarathkumara
winner of the 2024 ASI Postdoctoral Travel Award

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Supporting early-mid career members of ASI who wish to travel overseas for career-related purposes

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Molecular Immunology Lab at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland under the supervision of Professor Denise Doolan. I completed my PhD (2023) in the same lab at the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine (AITHM), James Cook University. 

Our research is focused on characterizing humoral immune responses in Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) associated cancers, lymphomas and diseases. Collaborations with the US National Cancer Institute (Bethesda, USA), Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, USA), University of Massachusetts (UMass Chan Medical School; Boston, USA), H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute (Tampa Bay, USA) and The University of Texas Health Science Center (Houston, USA) together with a large number of organisations from disease-endemic areas (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Gahana, UK and Europe), have allowed us access to samples for multiple well-defined case-control studies. Using a custom protein microarray representing the complete EBV proteome, my work aims to identify antibodies as biomarkers for disease risk as well as to predict response for treatment in EBV-specific T-cells as immunotherapy for EBV-associated lymphomas. During my PhD, my projects identified specific subsets of antibodies against EBV proteins as signatures of EBV-associated lymphomas including Natural-Killer T-cell lymphoma and classic Hodgkin’s lymphoma, with the outcomes published in peer-reviewed international journals. Currently, I am working on a longitudinal study characterising antibody response in acute infectious mononucleosis, primary EBV infection, in collaboration with UMass Chan Medical School, USA. 

The ASI Postdoctoral Travel award supported me to attend and present my work at the International Symposium on Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) and Kaposi's Sarcoma-associated Herpesvirus (KSHV) & Related Agents and Diseases – 3rd Joint Meeting, held in Boston, MA, USA, from 29th June to 3rd July 2024. This conference is the premier meeting for EBV research, and this year’s conference coincided with the 60th anniversary of the discovery of EBV. This meeting was a fantastic opportunity to interact with the experts from the field, to exchange knowledge, insights, and research advancements within the field and to receive invaluable feedback on my work. More importantly, this symposium provided the opportunity to meet our collaborators from the USA in person, having interacted solely online since 2019. This meeting allowed us to discuss our current and future studies on EBV, further strengthening our collaborative efforts. We were also approached by new research groups that are extremely interested in collaborating and sending samples over to us on other EBV-associated autoimmune diseases. Thank you, ASI for providing me with this travel award to support my career development by facilitating this opportunity.

Author: Yomani Sarathkumara

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of ASI