DR KIRSTIE BERTRAM

Dr Kirstie Bertram has specialised for over a decade in isolating immune cells from human tissue and interrogating them by high-parameter flow cytometry. In 2015, as a post-doctoral scientist, she optimised protocols for isolating myeloid cells (particularly dendritic cells and macrophages) from all human tissues physiologically relevant to HIV transmission, spanning skin, type I and type II mucosae (foreskin, labia, vagina, cervix, penile tissue, perineum, rectum). With the aim to keep them as immature and functionally intact as possible to investigate how they interact with HIV and HSV. Her work is located at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research, part of the Westmead Health precinct, which is the largest health precinct in Australia enabling close ties between clinicians and scientists to access a vast array of human tissue. Now Dr Bertram has optimised two OMIPS to study Innate Lymphoid Cells, NK cells, MAIT cells and γδ T cells, as well as resident memory T cells from human mucosal tissue. She’s also involved in projects to study immune cells from a huge range of human tissue and diseases ranging across skin, type II mucosae, intestine, cornea, and lymph nodes, studying how these cells interact with HIV, Herpes Simplex virus, and inflammatory bowel disease and vaccine adjuvants. Her work in high-parameter flow cytometry is complemented by work with Prof Andrew Harmans lab working on high-parameter imaging mass cytometry and spatial transcriptomics to thoroughly interrogate the immune environment of human mucosal tissues.