Wai-Hong Tham is a Malaysian professor at the University of Melbourne and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI), and joint head of the division of Infectious Disease and Immune Defense.
Tham was involved in work in 2000 with the lab of Barbara Baker on the tobacco mosaic virus resistance gene N in tobacco plants at University of California, Berkeley, using deletion studies to identify important amino acids in the structure of the protein to fight off the virus.
[8] Her further work in the same lab found the binding sites on the CR1 peptide for Rh4, and proved that phosphorylation of the cytoplasmic tails of Rh4 and other invasion proteins (sections of surface membrane proteins inside the cell) were essential for the malaria parasite to be able to penetrate red blood cells.
[14][15][16] This structure showed where antibody binding sites can obstruct the interaction and prevent host cell invasion.
[2][19] In 2019 Tham was a member of a team of P. vivax researchers from WEHI awarded the Australian Museum Eureka Prize.