Ian Frazer

Professor Ian Frazer, 2006 Australian of the Year, is highly regarded for his work in developing the human papillomavirus (HPV) cervical cancer vaccines. Since the vaccine’s global application in 2006, more than 40 million doses have been administered to women and girls in more than 90 countries. He is now on the verge of creating the world’s first vaccine for skin cancer.

Professor Ian Frazer received the 2008 Prime Minister’s Science Prize, and in the same year, received the Balzan Prize, a major international award recognising his ‘outstanding scientific achievement and lasting contribution to preventive medicine’.

In March 2007 he was awarded the prestigious Howard Florey Medal for Medical Research and in 2006 he was named the Australian of the Year for his development of the human papillomavirus (HPV) cervical cancer vaccines. In 2005, he won the CSIRO Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science.

Professor Ian Frazer was appointed Chair for 2009 of the Australian Cancer Research Foundation’s prestigious Medical Research Advisory Committee.

He is a Director of the Diamantina Institute for Cancer, Immunology and Metabolic Medicine at the University of Queensland and he chairs the medical and scientific advisory committee of the Queensland Cancer Fund. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and holds a personal chair as head of the Centre for Immunology and Cancer Research, a research institute of the University at the Princess Alexandra Hospital.

Professor Frazer advises the WHO and the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation on papillomavirus vaccines. He teaches immunology to undergraduate and graduate students of the University of Queensland.

Professor Frazer’s research interests include immunoregulation, and immunotherapeutic vaccines for Papillomavirus associated cancers. Prof Frazer holds research funding from several Australian and US funding bodies. He is a director of a biotechnology start up company, Coridon, with an interest in optimising and targeting polynucleotide vaccine protein expression.

Ian Frazer was trained as a renal physician and clinical immunologist in Edinburgh, Scotland before emigrating in 1980 to Melbourne, Australia to pursue studies in viral immunology and autoimmunity at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research with Professor Ian Mackay.

In 1985 he moved north to Brisbane to take up a teaching post with the University of Queensland.