Professor John Hamilton

Ph.D., D.Sc

Professor John Hamilton is Deputy Head of Department, Department of Medicine (RMH), The University of Melbourne and a Professorial Fellow at The University of Melbourne. He is also a Senior Principal Research Fellow, National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.

Previously he was the Founding Chief Executive Officer (part-time), Cooperative Research Centre for Chronic Inflammatory Diseases (2001-2004) and the Director, Arthritis and Inflammation Research Centre, University of Melbourne (1997-2011)

He has recently been awarded the American College of Rheumatology Distinguished Basic Investigator Award (2010) and the Australian Rheumatology Association Distinguished Service Medal (2010)

Professor Hamilton made the transition from a PhD in chemistry to postdoctoral training in biochemistry, microbiology and immunology followed by ten fruitful years in Basel, Toronto and New York at leading academic research institutions where he was an Associate Member and Assistant Professor at Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research/Cornell University Graduate School of Medical Sciences. He returned to Melbourne as a NHMRC Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne in November 1981.

Since being back in Australia Professor Hamilton has been promoted to Senior Principal Research Fellow (from 1993) and given the title Professorial Fellow by the University of Melbourne in that year.  In 1985 he was the first non-clinician to be awarded the Parr Rheumatic Prize by the Australian Rheumatology Association for excellence in rheumatology research. In 1997, he was appointed inaugural Director, Arthritis and Inflammation Research Centre,  at the University of Melbourne and in 1998 acted as the Scientific Director, Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery.  In 2001, Professor Hamilton was made founding CEO (part-time) of the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Chronic Inflammatory Diseases and assisted the CRC to obtain supplementary funding in 2003.  Continuous sizeable government, private and industry funding has been obtained, including as a Chief Investigator on three NHMRC Program Grants.  In 2010 he was the first non-clinician to be awarded the Australian Rheumatology Association Distinguished Service Medal; in the same year he was the second non-US researcher and second non-clinician to be awarded the American College of Rheumatology Distinguished Basic Investigator Award.  He is the Deputy Head of the Department of Medicine.

Professor Hamilton is the author of 302 publications (excluding abstracts) and my h-index is 55 (ISI Web of Knowledge).  His major contributions have been towards the understanding of cytokine-mediated functions of macrophage lineage cells in inflammation/autoimmunity. 

The main focus of his current research is the control of the development of cells of the monocyte/macrophage lineage and the function of this lineage in inflammatory disease.  More specifically it involves (i) animal models of inflammation, e.g. arthritis, with particular reference to the effects of CSF-1 and GM-CSF on disease progression, (ii) an analysis of the signal transduction pathways involved in the action of the CSFs, especially CSF-1(M-CSF), and (iii) characterization of monocyte/macrophage subpopulations.  Several potential targets for drug intervention have arisen from this work.  Professor Hamilton’s work has specific relevance to arthritic disease, in particular, but also has wide implications for many aspects of inflammation and pathology, and therefore for many diseases.