Rate My Professor Nick Fleming

Dr. Nick Fleming, known fully as Nicholas Fleming, serves as Sir Charles Hercus Health Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at the University of Otago's Faculty of Medicine, Dunedin School of Medicine. Holding a PhD in Medicine from the University of Melbourne, he conducted postdoctoral research at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Melbourne (2010-2012) prior to his appointment at Otago. His research investigates mechanisms of cancer establishment and progression, focusing on inflammation, immune responses against bowel cancer and metastasis. Central to his work is the C/EBP transcription factor family, which regulates SWI/SNF suppression complexes, interacts with other transcription factors, and modulates immune cell phenotypes, contributing to cancer immune evasion alongside inhibitory immune checkpoint proteins. He examines the prognostic value of SNPs in these processes, interleukin 6 in IBD under gene variation influence, non-coding lncRNA transcripts, and C/EBPβ in stress signalling, with the aim of combining drugs to augment immune checkpoint inhibitor effectiveness.

Fleming supervises research students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and teaches in PATH 302, ELM2, ELM3, and POPs. He chairs the New Zealand Society for Oncology's Colorectal Cancers Special Interest Group, convenes the editorial panel of the Otago Medical School Research Society, and maintains memberships in the Maurice Wilkins Centre (affiliate, 2014–), New Zealand Society for Oncology (2012–), Centre of Translational Cancer Research (2012–), Otago Institute for the Arts and Sciences (2012–), MelNet (2017–), and American Association for Cancer Research (associate, 2005–). Select publications encompass "Are single nucleotide polymorphisms underutilized for guiding treatment of inflammatory bowel disease?" (Immunology & Cell Biology, 2025), "An IL-6 promoter variant (-174 G/C) augments IL-6 production and alters skeletal muscle transcription in response to exercise in mice" (Journal of Applied Physiology, 2025), "∆133p53 isoform promotes tumour invasion and metastasis via IL-6 activation of JAK-STAT and RhoA-ROCK signaling" (Nature Communications, 2018), and "SnoRNA in Cancer Progression, Metastasis and Immunotherapy Response" (Frontiers in Genetics, 2021). His scholarship in cancer biology and genetics has attracted over 3,500 citations per Google Scholar.