Dr. Alex Wood

Biography

Alex Wood is a clinician-scientist working in intensive care, with research focused on understanding the dysregulation of the immune system in critically ill patients. Critical illness is aetiologically and clinically heterogeneous syndrome characterized by organ failure and immune dysfunction, which drives mortality. He believes that combining an understanding of immune cell function (the immunophenotype) with physiological and clinical data can facilitate novel insights into the pathophysiology of critical illness syndromes, allowing for the identification of viable therapeutic targets. His research began during his PhD at the University of Cambridge, where he investigated the signaling pathways leading to defective neutrophil function in critical illness states. He co-led the Functional Immunophenotyping in Critical Illness study (FICI) at the RMH-ICU of the Peter Doherty Institute, which performed deep immunophenotyping on 70 patients and controls, identifying endotypes with divergent clinical outcomes. Currently, he is in the data analysis phase of this study. His learnings and collaborations from the FICI study have driven his involvement in the MRFF Early Mid Career Researcher Grant-funded MEGASCORES project, where he is the chief investigator leading the recruitment for the Western Australian sites and overseeing the human immunophenotyping aspect of the study in collaboration with partners at the Doherty Institute.

Research Interests

Experience