NIHR comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre: cancer theme
The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London, is one of eleven NIHR comprehensive Biomedical Research Centres in the UK. With its strong focus on ‘translational research’ across seven research themes and a number of crosscutting disciplines, it aims to take advances in basic medical research out of the laboratory and into the clinical setting to benefit patients at the earliest opportunity. Access to the uniquely diverse patient population of London and the south east enables it to drive forward research into a wide range of diseases and medical conditions.
Cancer is one of the seven research themes. The theme leaders are Professor Arnie Purushotham and Professor Peter Parker.
Aim of the cancer theme
The overall aim is to identify clinical, histopathological and molecular characteristics that determine response and resistance to therapies and variation in patients' outcome and survival that can be translated into the development of novel therapeutics.
This aim will be achieved by creating a unique translational opportunity to develop and interrogate further a comprehensive demographic, clinical, histopathological and molecular ("omic") translational database linked to genetic predisposition, outcome and survival.
The exemplar for this approach are in breast and haematological cancer and psycho-oncology. These provide the driving force for the investigative translational studies that we propose to undertake, with a view to subsequently expanding this to other tumour sites.
Further information about our BRC can be found here.