Dr. Christina Spry

Biography

Christina Spry completed a Bachelor of Science with Honours at the Australian National University (ANU), majoring in chemistry and biology. She continued her graduate studies at ANU and was awarded her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2009, working under Professor Kevin Saliba on a project targeting the metabolism of vitamin B5 in human malaria parasites. Following her PhD, she briefly worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Professors Saliba and Kiaran Kirk, where she was awarded an NHMRC Early Career Fellowship. She then moved to the University of Cambridge in the UK to work with Professor Chris Abell on fragment-based drug discovery for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. After spending four years in Abell's group, she returned to the Saliba lab at ANU to complete her NHMRC Fellowship and in 2022 was appointed as a lecturer and group leader. Her research group focuses on drug discovery for infectious diseases, specifically validating new drug targets and identifying drug leads to combat malaria and tuberculosis. Her work integrates various scientific approaches including protein biophysics, structural biology, and cellular biochemistry to gain a comprehensive understanding of drug target-ligand interactions.

Research Interests

Experience