Professor Kate Louise Seib
Adjunct Professor
Medicine & Health
The Kirby Institute
Professor Seib is a NHMRC Leadership Fellow, Principal Research Leader, and the Associate Director (Research) at the Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics, Griffith University. Prof Seib’s expertise is in the field of molecular microbiology and vaccinology, with a focus on understanding virulence mechanisms and vaccine development for human mucosal pathogens including Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Neisseria meningitidis.
Prof Seib worked for several years at Novartis Vaccines (Siena Italy) as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Project Leader, and was part of the team that developed the meningococcal serogroup B vaccine, 4CMenB. Prof Seib established her own research laboratory in Australia in 2013 with the aim to develop novel treatment and prevention options for N. gonorrhoeae. Her work includes the discovery, pre-clinical characterisation and clinical evaluation of gonococcal vaccine candidates, as well as the use of mathematical modelling to assess the potential impact of different vaccines and vaccine implementation strategies on gonococcal prevalence.
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Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics, Griffith University, Gold Coast,QLD
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Prof Seib currently holds an NHMRC Investigator grant (leadership level 2). She has been a CI on several grants from the NHMRC (CJ Martin Fellowship, Career Development Award, Project, Ideas, Clinical Trials and Cohorts, Centre for Research Excellence), ARC (Discovery), NIH (U19, R01), the vaccine industry, and philanthropic organisations.
Key highlights include:
Meningococcal vaccine development.
While at Novartis Vaccines in Italy (now GSK), Prof Seib was involved in the development of the serogroup B Neisseria meningitidis vaccine, 4CMenB (Bexsero). She played a key role in the characterization of the vaccine antigens, in terms of their functional roles and their ability to induce an immune response. 4CMenB has been approved in approximately 40 countries and more than 50 million doses have been distributed since 2013, resulting in a substantial reduction in meningococcal disease.
Prof Seib recently investigated 4CMenB immune responses as part of a multidisciplinary team that showed giving antibiotics to newborns can reduce their immune response to vaccines.
Ryan FJ, Clarke M, Lynn MA, Benson SC, McAlister S, Giles LC, Choo JM, Rossouw C, Ng YY, Semchenko EA, Richard A, Leong LEX, Taylor SL, Blake SJ, Mugabushaka JI, Walker M, Wesselingh SL, Licciardi PV, SEIB KL, Tumes DJ, Richmond P, Rogers GB, Marshall HS, Lynn DJ. (2025). Bifidobacteria support optimal infant vaccine responses. Nature, 641(8062):456-464.
Meningococcal vaccine cross protection against gonorrhea.
Several observational studies have indicated that 4CMenB may provide cross protection against the closely related Neisseria gonorrhoeae, and the UK has recently rolled out the 4CMenB for gonorrhea prevention in groups at high risk of infection.
Prof Seib led the team that demonstrated that 4CMenB induces antibodies that cross-react with gonorrhea.
Semchenko EA, Tan A, Borrow R, SEIB KL. (2019) The serogroup B meningococcal vaccine Bexsero elicits antibodies to Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 69: 1101-1111.
She has led two clinical trials to test the effectiveness of 4CMenB against gonorrhea in men who have sex with men. The GoGoVax Trial co-led by Prof Andrew Grulich and Prof Basil Donovan (ClinicalTrials.gov:NCT04415424) was run at 7 sites with a team of >26 clinicians and researchers, funded by an Australian NHMRC. The MenGo Trial (ANZCTR:12619001478101) run at a single site, funded by the Gold Coast Hospital Foundation.
Gonococcal vaccine development.
Prof Seib co-discovered and characterised several potential gonococcal vaccine antigens (e.g., papers 4-6) that are under preclinical evaluation. She holds patents for these antigens that were included in a recent, multimillion dollar licence deal with LimmaTech Biologics.
She has also conducted mathematical modelling with A/Prof David Regan, Prof Richard Gray, Prof James Wood, and Dr Ben Hui to investigate potential vaccine characteristics and immunisation strategies needed for a gonococcal vaccine to be effective.
Hui, BB, Padeniya, TN, Rebuli, N, Gray, RT, Wood, JG, Donovan, B, Duan, Q, Guy, R, Hocking, JS, Lahra, MM, Lewis DA, Whiley DM, Regan DG, SEIB KL (2022) A Gonococcal Vaccine has the Potential to Rapidly Reduce the Incidence of Neisseria gonorrhoeae Infection Among Urban Men Who Have Sex With Men. Journal of Infectious Diseases. 225:983-993