Marios Koutsakos has been awarded an $18,000 Victorian Fellowship which will allow him to study human immune responses to flu and COVID-19 vaccines.

Early-career researcher Koustakos is one of twelve fellows and studies microbiology and immunology at the University of Melbourne’s Doherty Institute.

“The fellowship will allow me to visit Washington University (USA) and collaborate with a team there to study human immune responses to influenza and SARS-CoV-2 vaccines,” he said.

“The team I will be working with collects samples from lymphoid tissues (like the lymph node and the bone marrow) which provides for unique opportunity to better understand how vaccines work.”

He has focussed on understanding protective immunity to influenza, especially influenza B, viruses.

He said he hopes to apply the training he receives in the US to vaccine development in Victoria.

He said he first became fascinated by immunology and viruses while studying in London. 

“I was amazed by how something so small and relatively simple, when compared to humans, can take over our bodies,” he said.

“Through a series of unlikely but very fortunate events, I then found myself 16000 kilometers further away at the Kedzierska lab at the Doherty Institute, where I became fascinated by human immunology and the complexity of the immune system.”

Source: Doherty Institute

Liquidators of the Forum Group of Companies have sold off almost 600 abandoned waste digester machines built by waste processor subsidiary Iugis. 

McGrathNicol is reported to have received the funds from suspected buyer New Leaf Technologies (NLT) on Thursday.

Former consultants of Iugis set up NLT in 2019, but the key figures have operated in the environmental finance space since 2009.

NLT chief executive Matt Wildsoet said he had big plans for the business and the potential of the waste digesters.

“We’re thrilled to be able to continue the good work and principles of the business and the desired outcomes from an environmental perspective,” he said.

“The hard work that had been done we want to continue and we’re thrilled to be able to do that.”

NLT, similar to the Forum Group, offers customers assistance in securing funding and providing financial solutions to develop and fund “sustainable operations and infrastructure”.

Almost 300 of the machines have been sitting for months in a warehouse in Western Sydney, after being shipped from Iugis’ manufacturing site in Thessaloniki.

Another 300 of the machines are in service around Australia with former Iugis customers.

Customers linked to having the machines include private hospitals, the Pullman Hotel in Hyde Park, and Sydney pub The Fiddler.

The buyer also wins the right to continue servicing the machines leased by the customers, in a similar deal to that struck to sell the printer rental business at the core of the Forum Group.

But the long-mooted deal has been languishing for months, with the final sale requiring approvals by Forum creditors.

The funds from the sale go towards repaying Forum Group’s creditors, who are owed almost $400m after the company collapsed with allegations former chief executive Bill Papas oversaw a years-long scheme to defraud financiers through a false lease invoice scheme.

The Federal Court has heard allegations Mr. Papas funded the Iugis business, which manufactured and supplied the waste digester machines, through the scheme.

Papas set up a manufacturing site in Greece, with his business partner Anastasios Giamouridis, to make the machines.

The site is no longer operating.

Westpac has named Giamouridis in its case, alleging he received $10.7m in funds he was not entitled to.

Giamouridis also owns at least one percent of Mazcon, a corporate entity Papas used to buy the Greek football team Xanthi FC.

Until recently Giamouridis was also CEO of Xanthi FC, however, he resigned and was replaced at the team’s recent annual general meeting.