Peter Wark

Peter Wark, BMed, Ph.D., FRACP, FThorSoc, is a senior staff specialist in Respiratory and Sleep Medicine at John Hunter Hospital, Newcastle, and a conjoint Professor with the University of Newcastle. He is a senior investigator with the Priority Research Centre for Healthy Lungs at the Hunter Medical Research Institute. He is a chief investigator in the NHMRC Centre of Excellence in Severe Asthma.

His research interests are airway inflammation in the context of chronic airway disease, innate immunity, and the role of infection in chronic airways disease. His group has developed expertise in identifying respiratory viruses in airway secretions and developing an in vitro cell culture model of the airway epithelium that is used to model the effect of infection and inflammation. His research focuses on factors that increase susceptibility to virus infection in asthma, COPD, cystic fibrosis, and bronchiectasis, characterizing airway inflammation and innate immune responses in chronic airways disease and applying this to clinical care, as well as the development of precise individualized management strategies.