Vaccine adjuvants: in search of new paradigms.

Interview with Jenaid Rees, Commissioning Editor Nikolai Petrovsky is the Chairman and Research Director of Vaxine Pty Ltd, an Australian biotech company that specializes in novel vaccine adjuvants. He also holds the position of Director of Endocrinology at Flinders Medical Centre (Adelaide, Australia), Professor of Medicine at Flinders University, Vice President and Secretary General of the International Immunomics Society and serves on the Editorial Board of our sister journal, Expert Review of Clinical Immunology. He completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne (Victoria, Australia) then moved to Canberra (Australia) where he held conjoint positions at the Canberra Hospital, University of Sydney, Canberra University, Australian National University and the National Health Sciences Centre. In 2004, he moved to his current position at Flinders Medical Centre. His research interests include vaccine adjuvants, autoimmunity and immuno informatics. In 2009, his company Vaxine won the AMP Innovation Award at the Telstra business awards and Australia's coolest company award from Australian Anthill magazine. He has been an investigator for major international diabetes studies including ADVANCE, FIELD and DREAM and is a principal investigator on several large grants from the NIH. He has authored over 140 scientific papers, and his team has developed novel vaccines against influenza, hepatitis B, sting allergy, malaria, Japanese encephalitis, rabies and HIV, in addition to developing the world's first effective H1N1/2009pdm (swine flu) pandemic influenza vaccine.