Maria Emilia Duenas
I joined the END Rheumatic Heart Disease program at The Kids Research Institute Australia in 2023 to develop a pipeline towards advancing next-generation mucosal Strep A vaccine candidates into clinical trials. Using discovery-based proteomics approaches, I support vaccine development by investigating new candidate vaccines, with a particular focus on mucosal immunology and mucosal vaccines. This involves establishing direct links between the Strep A Vaccines (led by A/Prof. Alma Fulurija) and Strep A Pathogenesis & Diagnostics teams (led by Dr. Timothy Barnett).
Originally from Ecuador, I studied chemistry at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito. I obtained my PhD from Iowa State University in the United States, where I developed innovative approaches to enhance cellular spatial resolution using mass spectrometry, significantly increasing the information obtainable from biological samples. In 2019, I joined Newcastle University in the United Kingdom as a postdoctoral researcher. Shortly upon my arrival, I was awarded the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship, which I used to develop untargeted high-throughput screening approaches for drug discovery. I have expertise in assay development, discovery-based quantitative proteomics, and implementing thermal proteome profiling mass spectrometry techniques to identify protein targets and off-targets.
Abstracts this author is presenting: