Professor Marcel Nold is a consultant neonatologist in Monash Newborn, and Professor for Pediatric Immunology with the Department of Paediatrics, Monash University and also works as a clinician-scientist at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research. Prof Nold did his studies of Medicine at the JW Goethe-University at Frankfurt am Main, Germany, including final year rotations in Zürich (Switzerland), Montréal (Canada) and Capetown (South Africa). For his biomedical research training he spend six years at the Pharmazentrum at Frankfurt am Main and three years as a research Fellow at the laboratory of Prof CA Dinarello, University of Colorado Denver, USA. In 2009 he was recruited to The Ritchie Centre in Melbourne and finished his specialist training at Monash Newborn.

Prof Nold’s standing in cytokine research is evidenced by his key publications in Nature Immunology, Science Immunology and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

The discovery of the anti-inflammatory function of IL-37, which Prof Nold published in 2010, had a major impact on the interleukin field and necessitated a reorganisation of the IL-1 family nomenclature. Five years later, the discovery of the IL-37 receptor complex and the identification of the critical regions in the IL-37 structure lead to a modified IL-37 biologic with enhanced anti-inflammatory properties, which is now developed as an immunotherapeutic in collaboration with a pharmaceutical industry partner.

Prof Nold is a co-founder and Clinical Scientific Officer of a start-up company backed by a life science specialist venture capital investor that supports his research into cytokines and inflammatory diseases.

His academic Inflammation in Neonatal Diseases Research Group and his industry programs aim to characterise underlying pathways of inflammation in early life diseases, with an focus on interventional immunology in cardiopulmonary and intestinal diseases of the preterm.