Dr Mark Bunting

Dr. Mark Bunting is a post-doctoral researcher in the Hormone Dependent Cancers Laboratory at the South Australian immunoGENomics Cancer Institute (SAiGENCI). The lab is directed by Prof. Christopher Sweeney.

Dr. Mark Bunting completed his Ph.D. in Immunology at the University of Adelaide in 2012. He then joined the lab of Prof. Geoff Hill at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia studying the role of mucosal associated invariant T cells (MAIT) and natural killer cells in graft-versus-host disease and leukemia preclinical models. He then undertook a second post-doctoral position in the lab of Assistant Prof. Shawn Demehri at the Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. Here he researched the role of natural killer cells in solid organ transplantation and skin cancer preclinical models. In 2019 he moved back to Adelaide and joined the Genome Editing Laboratory to explore the use of CRISPR/Cas9 for genome editing.

Dr. Bunting's current research at SAiGENCI in the lab of Prof. Christopher Sweeney is focused on expanding our understanding of breast cancer pathogenesis, driven by hyper-activation of NF-kB and loss of tristetraprolin, TTP. Dysregulation of NF-kB and TTP can result in the advancement of aggressive tumours that acquire therapy resistance. The lab is also developing NF-kB-specific inhibitors, to be used in combination with current standard-of-care therapies, that are undergoing preclinical testing using in vitro and in vivo models to determine if these block tumour-promoting pathways and represent a new treatment option for patients with breast cancer.