Over the last five years Prof Mark Dawson has uncovered crucial insights into cancer biology, using cutting-edge technologies to study how cancer stem cells respond to treatment, particularly in diseases like acute myeloid leukaemia.
In 2019, Mark became the recipient of Cancer Council Victoria’s prestigious five-year Sir Edward Dunlop Research Fellowship to continue his research into epigenetics-based cancer treatments.
The most common type of genes and proteins mutated in the development of cancer are called epigenetic regulators. They control how DNA in our cells is accessed, affecting important processes like gene activity, DNA repair, and replication. Since epigenetic treatments are most effective in people with strong immune systems, Mark used advanced cancer models to determine which parts of the immune system are crucial for these treatments to work well in cancer patients.
“To make substantial gains for our patients, we have to develop strategies that monitor cancer evolution in real-time, enhance the patient’s anti-tumour immune response and stop cancers from adapting to evade our most potent therapies,” said Mark.
He has discovered new treatment targets in acute myeloid leukaemia stem cells, which have resulted in the design and delivery of clinical trials and the development of major partnerships with global pharmaceutical companies, paving the way for groundbreaking new treatments.
“Cancer Council Victoria has been a major supporter of me personally, as well as my lab. It’s a remarkable funding body that has taken the time to fund visionary high-risk research, has taken the time to fund implementation and practice- changing research. Cancer Council Victoria really supports their researchers in an ongoing fashion, and they understand what it takes to make discoveries that change diseases such as cancer,” said Mark.
“I think it’s really important to fund discovery science research. Without curiosity there are no discoveries. Curiosity-based discoveries can change the way we treat diseases in ways that we just haven't even thought of yet.”
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