Professor Richard Adams
Clinical Senior Lecturer of Oncology & Palliative Medicine, Cardiff University School of Medicine
Richard Adams is a reader and Director of the Wales Cancer Trials Unit and Wales Cancer Bank. His clinical practice and research is focused on lower gastrointestinal cancers. He is chair of the NCRI anorectal subgroup and is active in national and international research organisations including IRCI the International Rare Cancer Initiative (for anal cancer) and ARCAD.
He chairs the biomarker development group for FOCUS4 is Chief investigator for FOCUS4 D and leads on the radiotherapy quality assurance for the UK ARISTOTLE, COPERNICUS and TREC trials. He oversees collaborative translational research in numerous phase II/ III colorectal cancer trials. He was a founder member of and now chairs the South Wales Cancer Care link with Sierra Leone.
Campbell Roxburgh
Honorary Consultant Colorectal Surgeon and Clinical Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow
He trained in the West of Scotland before undertaking a post-CCT fellowship in advanced colorectal surgical oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York City. Since returning to Scotland in 2016, Campbell has secured a CSO-funded Scottish Senior Clinical Fellowship to support his research into development of novel neoadjuvant strategies incorporating immune oncology-radiotherapy combinations in rectal cancer. He is the chief investigator of the UK phase II PRIME-RT trial evaluating the addition of Durvalumab to extended neoadjuvant strategies in rectal cancer. He plays a leading role in the Scottish National Robotic-Assisted Surgery (RAS) Framework, chairing the National RAS Clinical Reference Group and has led on the implementation of colorectal RAS in Scotland in recent years. His clinical interests include minimally invasive/ robotic cancer surgery, surgery for locally advanced or recurrent disease and organ preservation in rectal cancer. His research interests include clinical and translational cancer research and clinical trials.
Professor Alan Melcher
Professor of Translational Immunotherapy at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and Honorary Consultant Oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust
He graduated in medicine from the University of Oxford and trained in Clinical Oncology (Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy) in Cardiff, London and Leeds. Following completion of his PhD at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now Cancer Research UK) in London, he was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota, before returning to the UK, where in 2007 he became Professor of Clinical Oncology and Biotherapy at Leeds, before moving to London in 2016.
Professor Melcher’s laboratory and translational research is focused on oncolytic viruses, radiotherapy and immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer. He and his team are investigating how to improve the ability of oncolytic viruses to trigger immunogenic cell death in tumours. They are also working on how radiotherapy treatment of tumours impacts on the immune system and anti-tumour immunity, in patients as well as pre-clinical model systems. These studies are designed to help us develop a more scientifically-informed, rational approach to combination immunotherapy strategies for testing in patients.
Professor Awen Gallimore
Professor at the Division of Infection and Immunity, Cardiff University
Awen gained a DPhil in Professor Andrew McMichael’s laboratory in Oxford, studying the immune response to simian and human immunodeficiency viruses. With a Wellcome Trust travelling fellowship she subsequently moved to the laboratory of the Nobel laureate Professor Rolf Zinkernagel to laboratory to further study factors important for anti-viral immunity.
She then established her own laboratory with further Wellcome Trust funding in the Nuffield Department of Medicine in Oxford to look at ways of persuading the immune system to recognise cancer. Awen moved to Cardiff in 2002 and shortly afterwards gained a senior fellowship from the MRC to expand her lab. The Cardiff lab, which currently receives funding from Cancer Research UK, Cancer Research Wales, Breast Cancer Now and The Wellcome Trust takes basic research using animal models of cancer through to testing novel immunotherapies in patients with cancer.
Professor Tim Illidge
Professor of Targeted Therapy and Oncology (University of Manchester) and honorary consultant clinical oncologist (Christie NHS Foundation Trust)
Dr Illidge completed his undergraduate degrees with a BSc in Biochemistry (London) and medicine (MB BS) at Guy’s Hospital, Royal College of Physicians (1993) and trained in clinical oncology in Southampton gaining Fellow of Royal College of Radiologists in 1997. His PhD focused on radiotherapy and immunotherapy combinations at University of Southampton and resulted in the award of Young British Cancer researcher of the year (1997) followed by a United States of America Senior Fulbright Fellowship and a United Kingdom Winston Churchill fellowship in 1998 taking him to Stanford University, California. In 1999 he returned to the UK as a CRUK Senior Clinical Research Fellow at University of Southampton and was appointed Professor of Targeted Therapy and Oncology at University of Manchester. He was awarded Fellow of Royal College of Pathologists in 2013 and Fellow of Royal College of Physicians in 2017 He works a clinician scientist dividing his time between his laboratory and the clinic and has performed pioneering work in radioimmunotherapy and radiotherapy and immunotherapy combinations. His translational research group, have been funded by continuous CRUK programme grants for the last 25 years focusing on proof of principle mechanistic insights to inform early phase clinical trials. He has published extensively > 230 manuscripts (H factor=51). His awards have included cancer researcher of the year by University of Manchester in 2012, researcher of the year for the Faculty of Medical and Life sciences in 2013, the Royal College of Radiologists gold medal in 2018, Skeggs medal in 2019, a Senior National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) investigator award in 2019 and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2022.
Dr. Silvia Formenti
Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology, Professor of Radiation Oncology and Medicine, Associate Director of Translational Research at the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine, and Radiation Oncologist-in-Chief at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. She is also the Sandra and Edward Meyer Professor of Cancer Research at Weill Cornell Medicine.
Dr. Formenti received her medical degree in Italy from the University of Milan. She is board certified in medical oncology, radiology and radiation oncology. A recognized leader in radiation oncology and breast cancer research, Dr. Formenti’s groundbreaking work has transformed the paradigm in radiation biology, demonstrating the efficacy of combining radiotherapy with immunotherapy to control cancer cell growth in solid tumors. In combination with immune checkpoint blockade, focal radiotherapy can be used to recruit patients’ immune systems to reject their individual tumor, resulting in a form of personalized immunotherapy, specific for each individual patient. She has translated preclinical work into clinical trials in metastatic solid tumors like breast and lung cancer, and in brain metastases. She is leading eighteen investigator-initiated clinical trials of immunotherapy and radiotherapy and is the Principal Investigator of several large federal grants and consortia. As a prolific researcher, Dr. Formenti has published over 300 papers recognized by high-impact journals including Nature Medicine, JAMA, Lancet Oncology, and the Journal of Clinical Oncology. She was honored to receive the ASTRO Gold Medal in 2019, SITC Team Science Award in 2021 and the ACR Fellowship in 2022.
Sandra Demaria
Professor of Radiation Oncology and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine
Sandra obtained her M.D. from the University of Turin, and then moved to New York City for her post-doctoral training in immunology as a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Cancer Research Fund awardee, followed by a residency in anatomic pathology at NYU School of Medicine. Dr. Demaria is internationally known for her pioneering studies demonstrating the synergy of radiation with immunotherapy. She was the first to show that focal radiation therapy can be used to overcome the resistance of poorly immunogenic tumors to immune checkpoint inhibitors, a finding later translated in clinical trials. Her lab has a central interest in addressing the molecular mechanisms that regulate ionizing radiation’s ability to generate an in situ tumor vaccine in both preclinical models as well as cancer patients. Seminal findings from her lab include the demonstration that radiation upregulates the expression of chemokines that attract effector T cells to the tumor, activates canonical pathways of viral defense that elicit the production of interferons, and enhances the production and presentation by cancer cells of mutational neoantigens recognized by T cells. In addition, she has tested in preclinical models several immune modulators for the ability to induce therapeutically effective anti-tumor immune responses when used with radiation, providing the rationale for clinical testing of these combinations. As a breast cancer pathologist Dr. Demaria also studies the immunological microenvironment of breast cancer in patients, and therapeutic strategies to modulate the immune infiltrate in preclinical models and in patients. She has published > 150 peer reviewed papers in leading journals including Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, Journal of Clinical Investigations, Cancer Immunology Research and others. She has served as the Chair of the AACR Cancer Immunology Working Group and as a member of the board of the Society for the Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) and the Radiation Research Society (RRS). She has received several awards for her scientific contributions and has served/serves on the editorial board of several scientific journals, and several scientific advisory boards.
Professor Sarah Brown
Professor of Cancer Clinical Trials Methodology and Director of the Early Phase Cancer Division at the Clinical Trials Research Unit (CTRU), University of Leeds.
Sarah is a trials methodologist and has worked as a statistician in the CTRU cancer team for almost 20 years, having undertaken a PhD in Leeds in phase II trial design. Sarah leads the early phase division that includes the radiotherapy-drug combination phase I platform CONCoRDE, and co-leads the Leeds CRUK Clinical Trials Unit radiotherapy portfolio with Prof. David Sebag-Montefiore. She is co-Chair of the UK CTRad phase I/II workstream and a member of CRUK’s Clinical Research Committee. Sarah has led the design of a number of phase I and II cancer trials and has a particular interest in the practical application of novel efficient designs in these settings, to provide a reliable and robust evidence base for future research. Most recently she has led the development of a road map for designing phase I radiotherapy-drug combination trials.
Séan M. O’Cathail
MSc DPhil MRCPI MRCP FRCR
Séan is currently appointed as a Clinical Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Cancer Sciences, University of Glasgow & Honorary Consultant Clinical Oncologist at the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre. He graduated from the School of Medicine, University College Cork, Ireland, with honours in 2008. In 2012 he moved Oxford to begin training in Clinical Oncology, passing the Fellowship of the Royal College of Radiologists in 2015. In 2016 he was awarded a CRUK Clinical Research Fellowship at the Oxford Institute of Radiation Oncology and was subsequently awarded a DPhil from the University of Oxford for his research in to mechanisms of radioresistance in rectal cancer. He is currently the Glasgow Principal Investigator of the CEDAR Phase I trial & PRIME-RT Phase II trial rectal cancer trials.