
A/Prof Mark Danta heads the Gastrointestinal, Liver and Microbiome Research Unit at the St Vincent’s Centre of Applied Medical Research at St Vincent’s Hospital. The unit provides leadership, particularly in the translation from clinical medicine to the bench and vice versa, to enhance the outcomes of any patient treatment. This includes: clinical medicine, laboratory-based virology and immunology research, qualitative methods, and epidemiology.
The unit’s research focuses on collaborative clinical translational research studies of the gastrointestinal immune system, microbiome, cirrhosis and its complications, hepatocellular cancer and non-invasive assessment of liver fibrosis.The liver focus is supervised by A/Prof Mark Danta, Dr Ian Lockart and A/Prof Robert Feller. The Inflammatory Bowel Disease focus is led by Dr Simon Ghaly and Dr Craig Haifer.
The unit has funding from National Health and Medical Research Council (NH&MRC), NSW Cancer Council, UNSW, St Vincent’s Clinic Foundation and the St Vincent’s Hospital Curran Foundation. The unit has ongoing research collaborations with the Kirby Institute, Garvan Institute, UNSW, Charles Perkins Institute and UTS. We also run a number of Pharma trials exploring novel therapies in liver disease, liver cancer and IBD. Currently, we have two PhD students and five honours students.
Our research strengths are built around our clinical activities and collaborations including:
Clinical medicine
Laboratory-based virology and immunology research
Qualitative methods
Epidemiology
We provide leadership in gastrointestinal, liver and microbiome research locally, nationally and internationally through our commitment to research, teaching and training, advisory roles and collaborations.