Biography

Prof. Barry Marshall has managed a Helicobacter pylori research group almost since his discovery of Helicobacter pylori with Robin Warren in 1982. Prof. Marshall has received many honors for his work on Helicobacter pylori, most notably they include, the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 2005, The William Beaumont Prize in 2006 (American Gastroenterology Association), in 1995 the Albert Lasker Award (Albert & Mary Lasker Foundation), and in 1998 the Dr. A. H. Heineken Prize for Medicine (The Alfred Heineken Foundation, Amsterdam). In 2007 Prof. Marshall was awarded the honour of Western Australian of the year and The Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AC). Prof. Marshall holds professional memberships with the Australian Academy of Science, the British Royal Society, the Institute of Medicine (USA), the American Gastroenterological Association, the Australian Gastroenterological Society and the Australian Medical Association to name a few.

In the past few years Prof. Marshall’s laboratory has developed enhanced methods for non-invasive studies on the molecular epidemiology of H. pylori, notably rapid breath test methods and retrieval of the organism (and culture) from a swallowed string. The H. pylori laboratory has produced seven Microbiology Honors graduates and currently has one Honors and three PhD candidates enrolled. Prof. Marshall has also recently succeeded in drawing investor funding from international and national sources for the creation of Ondek; a small biotech company focused on developing new biologic delivery systems for vaccines and therapeutics, utilizing the unique characteristics of genetically modified Helicobacter pylori.

Roles and responsibilities

• Ambassador for Life Sciences for Western Australia
• Clinical Professor of Medicine and Microbiology, UWA
• Director of the Marshall Centre for Infectious Diseases Research & Training, UWA
• Consultant Gastroenterologist, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital
• Founder and Director of ONDEK, a biotechnology company
• Founder and Director of TRI-MED, a diagnostics company
• Member, Western Australian Technology and Industry Advisory Council
• Honorary Patron of Scitech, the Ear Science Institute and Fremantle Hospital Medical Research Foundation
• Honorary Patron of Warren Jones Institute for Community Health and Medical Research at Fiona Stanley Hospital

Future research

• Basic and applied medical research in Helicobacter
• Genomics and the evolution of Helicobacter
• Expert Patient Treatment System (EPTS) software application
• Establishment of a Helicobacter culture collection with linked genome and clinical data (e-bio bank)

Research

Profiling antibiotic resistance in H. pylori
Testing novel antibiotic compounds on H. pylori clinical isolates
Monitoring the cure rate of quadruple therapies against multi-drug resistant H. pylori strains
Genomic sequencing and analysis of bacterial genomes
The evolution of Helicobacter species
H. pylori toxin and regulatory genes
The effects of H. pylori on the immune system