Rate My Professor Fran Munro

Fran Munro serves as the Research Adviser Māori, or Kaiarataki Rangahau Māori, at the University of Otago on a part-time basis. In this role, she offers high-level support to academic staff in crafting research funding applications and overseeing projects centered on Māori research. Additionally, she acts as Research Coordinator within the Management Group of the Centre for Translational Cancer Research. Munro earned her Master of Science degree from the University of Otago in 2016, with her thesis investigating the effect of vitamin D on gene expression in colorectal tumours and normal colon. She is presently a PhD candidate at the same institution, supported by the Māori Cancer Researcher Awards PhD Scholarship—a collaboration between Te Kāhui Matepukupuku o Aotearoa (Cancer Society of New Zealand), Hei Āhuru Mōwai Māori Cancer Leadership Aotearoa, and the Gut Cancer Foundation of New Zealand. Her doctoral research delves into Māori perspectives on the utilization of tissue from gastric cancer patients and their whānau in Te Tai Tokerau (Northland), aiming to foster culturally responsive approaches to precision medicine in cancer care.

Of Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Moerewa, Ngāti Rangi, and Ngāti Hine descent, Munro has made notable contributions to biomedical research, particularly through her involvement with the Department of Surgical Sciences at the Dunedin School of Medicine. In 2021, she was honored with the Award for Best Research Support in the Dunedin School of Medicine Awards through Health Research South's Health Research Excellence Awards. Her publication record includes co-authorship on several impactful papers, such as "Assessment of a Size-Based Method for Enriching Circulating Tumor Cells from Blood of Colorectal Cancer Patients" published in Cancers in 2022, "Short‐term high‐intensity interval training improves fitness before surgery: a randomised clinical trial" in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports in 2022, "Human liver-derived MAIT cells differ from blood MAIT cells in their metabolism and response to TCR-independent activation" in Immunology in 2021, "High-Dimensional Mass Cytometric Analysis Reveals an Incremental Advancement of the Effector T Cell-to-Memory T Cell Transition in Healthy Aging" in The Journal of Immunology in 2019, and studies on ∆133p53 isoform in oesophageal cancer and prognostic lncRNAs in colorectal cancer. These works highlight her engagement in advancing colorectal cancer diagnostics, pre-surgical patient fitness, and T cell immunology.