User:Wikieditornaturescience/sandbox

Mark J. Smyth (* April 4 1963 in Hobart, Tasmania) is an Australian Immunologist at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia.

Smyth earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Melbourne in 1984 and a Ph.D. in pathology in 1988. As a postdoctoral fellow and research associate, respectively, he worked at the Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center of the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland, and at the Austin Research Institute in Heidelberg, Victoria. Here he took over his own research groups from 1994 and in 2000 became joint head of the Cancer Immunology program with Joseph Trapani at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne. From 1998 to 2000, he held a professorship at the Victoria University of Technology. Since 2013, he has been at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane.

Mark Smyth has been able to make important contributions to the elucidation of the function of the innate and acquired immune systems in the control of cancer. Thus, he made important discoveries on expression and regulation of perforins, was able to clone novel granzymes outlining the killing effect of granules on cancer cells and elucidate the natural anti-tumor effect of Tumor Necrosis Factor Related Apoptosis Inducing Ligand (TRAIL). He also showed that cancer progression can be characterized by the selection of cancer cells that evade the immune system (immunoediting), paving the way for the development of immune checkpoint inhibitors. Other important contributions address the function of NK cells, T lymphocytes and of NKT cells or CD73 , CD96 and CD155 as targets of cancer immunotherapy.

Smyth is considered Australia's most cited immunologist. He has (as of September 2018) an h-index of 140.

Mark Smyth was convicted of falsifying scientific data on grant applications and human trials and resigned from his position 2021.

Awards (selection)

 * 2002 William B. Coley Award
 * 2004 Member of the Faculty of 1000
 * 2007 Charles Rodolphe Brupbacher Prize for Cancer Research
 * 2017 Member of the Australian Academy of Science

Web links

 * Professor Mark Smyth at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute
 * Laudation (including curriculum vitae, as of 2007) at the Charles Rodolphe Brupbacher Foundation