Scientia Professor Anthony (Tony) Kelleher is a clinician scientist. He graduated from Medicine at UNSW in 1986. He trained in internal medicine and pathology at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney at the height of the HIV epidemic, qualifying as a Clinical Immunologist and Immunopathologist in 1995.
Professor Kelleher completed his PhD in 1997, describing the modulation of the HIV infected immune system by a range of interventions including therapeutic vaccines and IL-2. He made the first observations explaining how antiretroviral treatment restores the immune system in those with late stage HIV infection.
He completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Oxford at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine and Nuffield Department of Medicine, where he studied the coevolution of HIV and the viral immune response. He was the first to explain why people with a particular genetically determined immune response were protected from HIV disease progression.
Professor Kelleher returned to Sydney in 2001 to join an Australian consortium developing a HIV prevention vaccine, which successfully completed clinical trials in Australia and Thailand.
He has been involved with every HIV vaccine trial conducted in Australia, and multiple phase I-IV clinical trials, particularly those involving patients with primary infection. He has developed a range of immunological assays that are now widely used and is currently working on mapping the HIV reservoir and developing a novel “block and lock” approach towards clinical application.
He applied this knowledge to COVID-19, leading the development of a range of clinical trials, cohort studies and sophisticated laboratory assays. This allows the rapid characterisation of each new viral strain as it arises, provided the first insights into the causes of Long COVID, mapped a pathway for more rapid attainment of vaccine induced herd immunity and underpinned the development of potential RNA based therapeutics for COVID-19.
Professor Kelleher was the Head of the Immunovirology and Pathogenesis Program at the Kirby Institute from 2005 to 2025. He has also served as Principal of the Infection, Immunology and Inflammation theme and Senior Vice Dean Research in the Faculty of Medicine at UNSW Sydney. He previously served as Acting Dean of UNSW Medicine.
Professor Kelleher is a senior Staff specialist at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, responsible for clinical care of patients with HIV infection and autoimmune diseases as well as oversight of the NSW State HIV Reference laboratory.