NHIP Lightning Talk: How can we improve outcomes for cancer patients?

15/02/2022 12:00 pm to 15/02/2022 12:30 pm

Event Details

Cancer will affect 1 in 2 of us in our lifetime and impacts patients across all age groups.

About this event

Our mission is to improve cancer diagnosis and treatment options for patients across all ages. Current cancer care often requires treatments which can be very toxic and create a huge burden of care and anxiety for patients and their loved ones. There have been significant improvements in treatments and outcomes for many cancers over the last few decades. However, there remains a major unmet need for better and less toxic treatments.

The Centre for Cancer at Newcastle University works to improve cancer outcomes by understanding the biology of the disease. These discoveries are then used to develop new, kinder treatments alongside new biomarkers to guide diagnosis and personalised treatment selection. These can then be taken forward into clinical practice.

In this session Professors Plummer and Clifford will explain these pathways and highlight examples where Newcastle discoveries have changed clinical practice worldwide.

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Speakers

Professor Ruth Plummer is an honorary consultant medical oncologist in Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine, Newcastle University. She directs the Sir Bobby Robson Cancer Trials Research Centre and leads the Newcastle Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre and CRUK Newcastle Cancer Centre. She has taken multiple agents targeting DDR into the clinic, including the first-in-human PARP and ATR inhibitors.

Nationally she sits on grant funding committees for CRUK, MRC and NIHR, and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2018 for her work developing PARP inhibitors as novel cancer treatments for patients.

Professor Steven Clifford directs the Newcastle University Centre for Cancer and is Professor of Molecular Paediatric Oncology. He was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2021. He co-leads a Childhood Brain Tumour Research team with major interests in understanding the biological basis of embryonal brain tumour development and translating these findings into improved clinical treatments.

He plays leading roles in national (CCLG, NCRI) and international (SIOP-Europe, ITCC-Brain) research networks and clinical trials in medulloblastoma. He sits on advisory panels for Cancer Research UK, The Brain Tumour Charity and the French National Cancer Institute (INCa), and also helps run an outreach programme for children’s cancer care in Malawi, Africa.

Newcastle Health Innovation Partners

This event is hosted by Newcastle Health Innovation Partners, one of eight Academic Health Science Centres in the UK, bringing together world-class research, education and clinical practice for the benefits of the region.