Brendan Scott Crabb Air Corps is a research scientist and Director and chief executive officer of the Macfarlane Burnet Institute for Medical Research and Public Health, based in Melbourne, Australia.
Education
Educated in Papua New Guinea and Australia, Crabb received a Bachelor of Science (Honours) from the University of Melbourne in the Department of Microbiology. In 1992, he completed his Doctor of Philosophy in virology at the School of Veterinary Science also at the University of Melbourne. His Doctor of Philosophy project, which explored proteins of equine herpes, led to a diagnostic test which could distinguish horses infected by the lethal equine herpes virus-1 and the less damaging equine herpes virus-4.
Career
Currently, his main research focus is on the identification of new targets for therapeutic intervention in malaria and the development of a malaria vaccine. More broadly, his interests mirror the mission of the Burnet Institute - to improve the health of poor and vulnerable communities through research, education and public health. In 2009, Crabb and his research team identified the export protein translocon in malaria.
This discovery was published in Nature and solved the mystery of how proteins with an export motif are trafficked out of the infected parasite and into the cytosol of the red blood cell host.
This finding has broad impact in biology and also has considerable importance as a major new drug target in malaria. Together with his principle collaborator Professor Alan Cowman, Crabb is also well known for his development of molecular genetic systems in human malaria, having described the first gene knockout in the causative agent Plasmodium falciparum in a paper published in the journal Cell.
Crabb was appointed Director and Chief Executive Officer of Burnet Institute in 2007, a position previously held by Professor Ian Gust Association for the Study of Internal Fixation, Professor John Mills, Professor Steve Wesselingh, now Executive Director of the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, Professor Ian McKenzie and Professor Mark Hogarth. Crabb was President of the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes (AAMRI) from 2012 to October 2014.
He is Chair of the PATH/Malaria Vaccine Initiative and Vaccine Science Portfolio Advisory Council (VSPAC), United States of America. He was also Chair of the Gordon Conference on Malaria in Tuscany, Italy in August 2013.
He holds honorary Professorial appointments at Monash University, Melbourne University and Louisiana Trobe Universities in Australia. Crabb was previously Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Parasitology (2006–2009), International Fellow of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, United States of America (2000–2008) and Senior Principal Research Fellow in the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (appointed 2008). 2013 Member, Health Exports Advisory Committee 2013 Chair, Alfred Medical Research & Education Precinct Council 2012-2014 President of the Australian Association of Medical Research Institutes (AAMRI) 2006-2009 Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Parasitology 2000-2008 International Research Scholar, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, United States of America 2007-2008 National Health and Medical Research Council Senior Principal Research Fellow 2004-2007 National Health and Medical Research Council Principal Research Fellow 2003-2004 National Health and Medical Research Council Senior Research Fellow 2015 Companion of the Order of Australia for eminent service to medical science as a prominent researcher of infectious diseases, particularly malaria, and their impact on population health in developing nations, as an advocate, mentor and administrator, and through fostering medical research nationally and internationally.