Mark Harris

Mark Harris is a paediatric endocrinologist based at the Queensland Children's Hospital in South Brisbane, Australia. He maintains a strong research affiliation with the University of Queensland Diamantina Institute within the Faculty of Medicine, where he collaborates on projects focused on type 1 diabetes pathogenesis, prediction, and therapy. His work emphasizes early identification of at-risk infants through genetic and transcriptomic signatures, improving clinical models for predicting stimulated C-peptide levels in children with recent-onset type 1 diabetes, and comprehensive genetic screening for maturity-onset diabetes of the young (MODY). Harris has highlighted the benefits of monitoring programs for at-risk children, noting that they reduce the incidence of diabetic ketoacidosis to less than five percent compared to up to 40 percent in unmonitored cases, enabling preventive strategies.

In 2018, Harris was a key member of the T1D Research Team at the UQ Diamantina Institute, alongside Professor Ranjeny Thomas and Ahmed Mehdi, which was named a finalist for the Johnson & Johnson Eureka Prize for Innovation in Medical Research for developing a method to identify infants at high risk of type 1 diabetes via peripheral blood gene activation patterns. He has supervised higher degree research projects at UQ, including studies on islet-specific T cell responses in type 1 diabetes, monogenic disorders of glucose-stimulated insulin secretion, and biomarkers in peripheral blood predictive of clinical type 1 diabetes. Key publications include 'Growth During Pubertal Induction in Girls With Turner Syndrome: A Retrospective Cohort Study' (2024), 'Circulating biomarkers during progression to type 1 diabetes' (2023), 'An improved clinical model to predict stimulated C-peptide in children with recent-onset type 1 diabetes' (2019), 'Cost-effectiveness Analysis of Routine Screening Using Massively Parallel Sequencing in Maturity-Onset Diabetes of the Young' (2019), 'A peripheral blood transcriptomic signature predicts autoantibody development in infants at-risk for type 1 diabetes' (2018), 'Clinical usefulness of comprehensive genetic screening in maturity-onset diabetes of the young (MODY)' (2018), 'Gender Bias in Children Receiving Growth Hormone Treatment' (2010), and 'Reactivated CD4+Tm Cells of T1D Patients and Siblings Display an Effector Memory Bias' (2015). His contributions have advanced paediatric endocrinology, particularly in diabetes management and genetic diagnostics.

Professional Email: mark.harris@health.qld.gov.au