Ebony Monson group
Lipid biology, immune response, viruses, antiviral therapies
Dr Ebony Monson is an NHMRC postdoctoral fellow in the La Trobe Institute for Molecular sciences at La Trobe University. She leads a group within the antviral innate immunology lab headed by Prof. Karla Helbig, and seeks to better understand the ways our bodies respond to viral infection with the hope of using this knowledge towards new antiviral therapies.
Dr Monson completed her Ph.D. (Feb 2021) in the field of virology with a focus on immune responses to viruses by cells; uncovering novel mechanisms by which our bodies respond to viral infections. In 2022 she was awarded the Australasian Virology Society "Rising Star" Award; a prestigious award for an outstanding virology early career researcher who has made important contributions to the virology discipline and who demonstrates a strong potential to become a future leader in virology research.
Dr Monson was recently awarded a NHMRC EL1 Fellowship (starting 2025) to expand her work on lipid droplets, exploring their role as extracellular communicators during infection. Collectively, she hopes that her research will contribute to new antiviral treatments for viruses for which we have no therepeutics.
Research Areas
Cell-to-cell communication is essential for the effective coordination of biological processes between cells in tissues. This process is often facilitated by the release and uptake of small particles. Small lipid enclosed particles such as extracellular vesicles (EVs) mediate intercellular communication through transfer of their cargo and are actively explored for their role in various diseases and their potential therapeutic and diagnostic applications. Though EVs are the dominantly studied extracellular communicators, lipid droplets (LDs), which are also lipid-enclosed small particles, remain unexplored in this space. Dr Monson has recently demonstrated that LDs move between cells and can directly influence the antiviral response of neighbouring cells.
Her research now focuses on the mechanisms underpinning LD movement and their relationship to EVs in the hope we could manipulate this communication style during virus infection. A better understanding of how cells communicate during infection is vital in targetting new drugs at this response.
Globally, over 400 million people are infected with dengue virus and over 1 billion with influenza annually. With the global threat of emerging and re-emerging viral infections, there is a need for new antivirals and my research is creating a pan-antiviral that targets the ‘Achilles heel’ of our immune response. Dr Monson’s research has identified that lipid droplets (small lipid-filled organelles) are upregulated following viral infection and this is a requirement for cells to mount an effective antiviral response. This finding is ground-breaking as it describes a new role for lipid droplets in the immune response, opening new doors for drug development. Dr Monson’s research has described the mechanism underpinning this, and the characteristics of lipid droplets during infection. Her current research aims to use this information to develop the lipid droplet as a novel lipid nanoparticle, that can be delivered to cells and activate their innate immune response to reduce viral loads.
This research is one step close to being able to develop a pan-antiviral that would have the ability to combat newly emerging viral infections and viruses for which we currently have no therapeutics, providing new hope in the antiviral space.