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, particularly triple negative breast cancer, driven by NF-kB. This subtype of breast cancer is challenging to treat as it lacks estrogen and HER2 receptors which have been targeted with effect in ER+ and HER2+ breast cancers, respectively. Triple negative breast cancer also readily develops resistance to chemotherapy, the main treatment option used in conjunction with surgery. Investigation of NF-kB-specific inhibitors, used in combination with current standard-of-care therapies, will be tested 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.