- About
- Strategic Plan
- Structure
- Governance
- Scientific divisions
- ACRF Cancer Biology and Stem Cells
- ACRF Chemical Biology
- Advanced Technology and Biology
- Bioinformatics
- Blood Cells and Blood Cancer
- Clinical Translation
- Epigenetics and Development
- Immunology
- Infectious Diseases and Immune Defence
- Inflammation
- Personalised Oncology
- Population Health and Immunity
- Structural Biology
- Ubiquitin Signalling
- Laboratory operations
- Funding
- Annual reports
- Human research ethics
- Scientific integrity
- Institute life
- Career opportunities
- Business Development
- Partnering opportunities
- A complete cure for HBV
- A stable efficacious Toxoplasma vaccine
- Activating SMCHD1 to treat FSHD
- Fut8 Sugar coating immuno oncology
- Improving vision outcomes in retinal detachment
- Intercepting inflammation with RIPK2 inhibitors
- Novel inhibitors for the treatment of lupus
- Novel malaria vaccine
- Novel therapy for drug-resistant cancers
- Precision epigenetics silencing SMCHD1 to treat Prader Willi Syndrome
- Rethinking CD52 a therapy for autoimmune disease
- Selective JAK inhibition: mimicking SOCS activity
- Targeting minor class splicing
- Treating Epstein-Barr virus associated malignancies
- Royalties distribution
- Start-up companies
- Partnering opportunities
- Collaborators
- Publications repository
- Awards
- Discoveries
- Centenary 2015
- History
- Contact us
- Research
- Diseases
- Cancer
- Development and ageing
- Immune health and infection
- Research fields
- Research technologies
- People
- Anne-Laure Puaux
- Associate Professor Aaron Jex
- Associate Professor Alyssa Barry
- Associate Professor Andrew Webb
- Associate Professor Anne Voss
- Associate Professor Chris Tonkin
- Associate Professor Daniel Gray
- Associate Professor Edwin Hawkins
- Associate Professor Ethan Goddard-Borger
- Associate Professor Grant Dewson
- Associate Professor Isabelle Lucet
- Associate Professor James Murphy
- Associate Professor Jeanne Tie
- Associate Professor Jeff Babon
- Associate Professor Joan Heath
- Associate Professor Justin Boddey
- Associate Professor Marco Herold Marco Herold
- Associate Professor Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat
- Associate Professor Marnie Blewitt
- Associate Professor Matthew Ritchie
- Associate Professor Melissa Davis
- Associate Professor Oliver Sieber
- Associate Professor Peter Czabotar
- Associate Professor Rachel Wong
- Associate Professor Ruth Kluck
- Associate Professor Sandra Nicholson
- Associate Professor Seth Masters
- Associate Professor Sumitra Ananda
- Associate Professor Tim Thomas
- Associate Professor Wai-Hong Tham
- Associate Professor Wei Shi
- Catherine Parker
- Dr Anna Coussens
- Dr Ashley Ng
- Dr Ben Tran
- Dr Bernhard Lechtenberg
- Dr Bob Anderson
- Dr Brad Sleebs
- Dr Diana Hansen
- Dr Drew Berry
- Dr Emma Josefsson
- Dr Gemma Kelly
- Dr Gwo Yaw Ho
- Dr Hui-Li Wong
- Dr Hélène Jousset Sabroux
- Dr Ian Majewski
- Dr Ian Street
- Dr Jacqui Gulbis
- Dr James Vince
- Dr Joanna Groom
- Dr John Wentworth
- Dr Kate Sutherland
- Dr Kelly Rogers
- Dr Leanne Robinson
- Dr Leigh Coultas
- Dr Lucy Gately
- Dr Margaret Lee
- Dr Mary Ann Anderson
- Dr Maryam Rashidi
- Dr Matthew Call
- Dr Melissa Call
- Dr Misty Jenkins
- Dr Philippe Bouillet
- Dr Rebecca Feltham
- Dr Rhys Allan
- Dr Samir Taoudi
- Dr Sant-Rayn Pasricha
- Dr Shalin Naik
- Dr Sheau Wen Lok
- Dr Simon Chatfield
- Dr Stephen Wilcox
- Dr Tracy Putoczki
- Guillaume Lessene
- Helene Martin
- Keely Bumsted O'Brien
- Mr Joel Chibert
- Mr Simon Monard
- Mr Steve Droste
- Ms Carolyn MacDonald
- Ms Samantha Ludolf
- Professor Alan Cowman
- Professor Andreas Strasser
- Professor Andrew Lew
- Professor Andrew Roberts
- Professor Clare Scott
- Professor David Huang
- Professor David Komander
- Professor David Vaux
- Professor Doug Hilton
- Professor Gabrielle Belz
- Professor Geoff Lindeman
- Professor Gordon Smyth
- Professor Ian Wicks
- Professor Ivo Mueller
- Professor Jane Visvader
- Professor Jason Tye-Din
- Professor Jerry Adams
- Professor John Silke
- Professor Ken Shortman
- Professor Leonard C Harrison
- Professor Lynn Corcoran
- Professor Marc Pellegrini
- Professor Melanie Bahlo
- Professor Mike Lawrence
- Professor Nicos Nicola
- Professor Peter Colman
- Professor Peter Gibbs
- Professor Phil Hodgkin
- Professor Stephen Nutt
- Professor Suzanne Cory
- Professor Terry Speed
- Professor Tony Burgess
- Professor Tony Papenfuss
- Professor Warren Alexander
- Diseases
- Education
- PhD
- Honours
- Masters
- Undergraduate
- Student research projects
- 6 cysteine proteins key mediators between malaria parasites and human host
- A balancing act of immunity: autoimmunity versus malignancies
- Activating https://www.wehi.edu.au/node/add/individual-student-research-page#Parkin to treat Parkinson’s disease
- Analysing single cell technologies to understand breast cancer
- Bioinformatics methods for detecting and making sense of somatic genomic rearrangements
- Characterising new regulators in inflammatory signalling pathways
- Computational melanoma genomics
- Control of human lymphocyte cell expansion in complex immune diseases
- Deciphering biophysical changes in red blood cell membrane during malaria parasite infection
- Deciphering the signalling functions of pseudokinases
- Deep profiling of blood cancers during targeted therapy
- Determining the mechanism of type I cytokine receptor triggering
- Differential expression analysis of RNA-seq using multivariate variance modelling
- Discovering new genetic causes of primary antibody deficiencies
- Discovery of novel drug combinations for the treatment of bowel cancer
- Drug targets and compounds that block growth of malaria parasites
- Effects of nutrition on immunity and infection in Asia and Africa
- Enabling deubiquitinase drug discovery
- Epigenetic drivers of immune cell function
- Epigenetic regulation of systemic iron homeostasis
- Exploiting cell death pathways in regulatory T cells for cancer immunotherapy
- Fatal attraction: how apoptotic pore assembly is governed during mitochondrial cell death
- Genomic instability and the immune microenvironment in lung cancer
- How do T lymphocytes decide their fate?
- How the epigenetic regulator SMCHD1 works and how to target it to treat disease
- Human lung protective immunity to tuberculosis: host-environment systems biology
- Human monoclonal antibodies against malaria infection
- Identifying novel treatment options for ovarian carcinosarcoma
- Inflammasome activation in autoinflammatory disease
- Investigating mechanisms of cell death and survival using zebrafish
- Investigating microbial natural products with anti-protozoal activity
- Investigating the role of mutant p53 in cancer
- Investigating the role of platelets in motor neuron disease
- Mapping DNA repair networks in cancer
- Molecular mechanisms controlling embryonic lung progenitor cells
- Nanobodies against malaria
- Neutrophil heterogeneity in inflammation
- New approaches to treat cancer and inflammatory disease using the ubiquitin system
- Next generation CRISPR screens using iPSC
- Novel cell death and inflammatory modulators in lupus
- Programming T cells to defend against infections
- Restraining cytokine-receptor signalling in myeloproliferative neoplasms
- Screening for regulators of jumping genes
- Statistical analysis of genome-wide chromatin organisation using Hi-C
- Statistical analysis of trapped-ion-mobility time-of-flight mass spectrometry proteomics data
- Structure and function of E3 ubiquitin ligases
- Target identification of potent antimalarial agents
- The mitochondrial TOM complex in neurodegenerative disease
- The molecular mechanisms underlying Kir4.1 activity in gliomas
- The role of differential splicing in the genesis of breast cancer
- Uncovering the roles of long non-coding RNAs in human bowel cancer
- Understanding malaria infection dynamics
- Understanding the function of the E3 ligase Parkin in Parkinson’s disease
- Understanding the molecular basis of chromosome instability in gastric cancer
- Utilising pre-clinical models to discover novel therapies for tuberculosis
- School resources
- Frequently asked questions
- Student profiles
- Student achievements
- Student association
- News
- Donate
- Online donation
- Ways to support
- Support outcomes
- Supporter stories
- Rotarians against breast cancer
- A partnership to improve treatments for cancer patients
- 20 years of cancer research support from the Helpman family
- A generous gift from a cancer survivor
- A gift to support excellence in Australian medical research
- An enduring friendship
- Anonymous donor helps bridge the 'valley of death'
- Renewed support for HIV eradication project
- Searching for solutions to muscular dystrophy
- Supporting research into better treatments for colon cancer
- Taking a single cell focus with the DROP-seq
- WEHI.TV
Systems biology

Cells contain hundreds of thousands of different molecules. How a cell functions depends on complex interactions between these molecules. Our systems biology researchers are revealing the many links between different molecules. This is explaining how cells function, and what changes contribute to disease.
Systems biology research at the institute
Our systems biology researchers are focused on:
- Investigating how molecules interact in networks in health and disease, using state-of-the-art technologies.
- Making sense of the complex data generated by studies of healthy and diseased cells.
- Establishing new ways to diagnose cancer, and to match different types of cancers with effective treatments.
Our systems biology research incorporates many research fields, including:
What is systems biology?
Cells are made up of many types of molecules that work together, or interact, in highly coordinated ways that allow the cells to function properly. Systems biology explores the complex interactions between the molecules in a cell.
Systems biology is particularly focused on the interactions between:
- Proteins: molecules that perform myriad functions within the cell.
- DNA: which stores the cell’s genetic information, including the instructions for making proteins.
- RNA: which links DNA with the protein-making machinery,
- Metabolites: small molecules such as sugars and lipids that fuel the cell.
These molecules can interact with, and influence, a variety of other molecules. In some cases, molecules in a cell may be influenced by external signals, such as signalling molecules binding to a receptor.
The many molecular interactions occurring within a cell are considered ‘networks’. Changes in one particular molecule, such as the amount of protein, or a change in one DNA base, can trigger changes in thousands of other molecules in the network. This can have profound influences on how the cell functions.
Many diseases can be traced to changes in one, or a few, molecules – such as a single genetic change that triggers disease.
Systems biology can reveal how changes in one molecule influence other molecules in its network. This can lead to new insights into:
- How normal cells develop and function.
- How molecular changes, which may be complex, cause disease.
- Better ways to diagnose disease, by assessing many molecular changes at once.
- Innovative strategies for treating disease based on targeting key points in a crucial network.
Systems biology techniques
To create a holistic picture of the molecular networks controlling health and disease, our systems biology research relies on:
- Advances in experimental technology that enable our researchers to precisely measure the many changes occurring in molecular networks within cells.
- Powerful statistical and computational methods that reliably record and decipher the large and complex data generated by these experiments. Bioinformatics techniques are an important aspect of this.
High-throughput technologies are an important aspect of systems biology experimentation. Robots and computers enable our researchers to rapidly and accurately carry out thousands or even millions of experiments.
These methods generate a huge amount of data that describe different molecules in and outside of the cell. The data are integrated using computational techniques. This can provide new insights into the interaction networks of different molecules within cells.
Insights into disease
Our systems biology researchers are revealing the role of molecular interactions and cell communication in health and disease.
Mapping blood cell development
Systems biology approaches have allowed our researchers to generate ‘road maps’ of the molecules that are critical at every stage of blood cell development. This is revealing the defects that can lead to blood diseases, including leukaemia.
Early detection of bowel cancer
Bowel cancers that are detected early are more likely to be cured. Most Australian bowel cancer cases are not detected at this early stage, and better tests are needed. Our researchers are using systems biology to develop a new diagnostic blood test for bowel cancer.
Finding the best treatment for cancer
The best treatment for a person with cancer depends on the type of cancer they have – such as lung cancer, leukaemia or ovarian cancer. However, not all patients with the same type of cancer respond to the same treatments. Our systems biology researchers are developing new ways to predict how a person with cancer will respond to different treatments. Their goal is to develop new strategies to match a person with cancer to the best treatment for their individual disease.