Cancer Prevention Trials Unit

External staff

Benoit Aigret

Benoit has worked with Professor Sasieni at Cancer Research UK since 2002, when he participated in the set-up of the International Breast cancer Intervention Study II (IBIS-II), a large multi-centre phase III trial investigating chemoprevention. Benoit became Head of Operations for the Cancer Prevention Trials Unit (CPTU) at Queen Mary University of London in 2006, when Professors Cuzick and Sasieni received the first Cancer Research UK Programme grant to set-up a unit specialising in cancer prevention and screening. Since July 2019, Benoit has been supporting the CPTU in a Clinical Project Management Consultant role, focusing on strategic planning of cross-functional teams, facilities, and services to ensure that the evolving needs of the researchers and regulatory requirements are continually met. In particular, Benoit provides support to the CPTU team and investigators to facilitate the development of high-quality clinical trials by supporting new funding applications, advising on trial operations, resource requirements, preparing costing, reviewing and negotiating new contracts.

Francesca Pesola

Dr Pesola is a Senior Statistician working at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine (QMUL) and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the School of Cancer & Pharmaceutical Sciences (KCL), where she collaborates with colleagues from the Cancer Prevention Group.

Dr Pesola is a professional member of the Royal Statistical Society (Chartered Statistician, CStat) with over 10 years of experience both in academia and in government. She has worked on a variety of areas ranging from mental health to public health. She has extensive experience of designing and analysing data from randomised controlled trials as well as epidemiological studies.

Annie Lincoln

Annie Lincoln is a post graduate research (PGR) student within the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine and School of Cancer & Pharmaceutical Sciences with a doctoral fellowship from King’s College London. Annie has a background in hereditary cancer clinical research and has extended this interest into her post graduate studies. As part of graduate research, she will be looking at faecal immunochemistry testing (FIT) screening in a UK population of Lynch Syndrome patients.

Roberta Maroni – BEST3 Statistician

Roberta Maroni joined Professor Sasieni’s team to work as a statistician on the BEST3 trial, managed by the Cancer Prevention Trials Unit, which aims at improving detection of Barrett’s Oesophagus by means of the Cytosponge™. In the past, she collaborated with the National Facial and Oral Research Centre (NFORC), she worked on the iTACTIC trial, and she used to be a part of the Policy Research Unit on cancer awareness, screening and early diagnosis at Queen Mary University, led by Professor Stephen Duffy, for which she performed an evaluation of the national breast screening programme and an assessment of second timed appointments for non-attenders of breast screening.

Magnesh Thorat

Mangesh joined the Centre for Cancer Prevention at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, London, in 2009, to continue his work on breast cancer biomarkers, with special focus on DCIS, a pre-invasive stage of breast cancer. He is specifically trying to identify biomarkers that will allow us to differentiate between DCIS that recurs or progresses to invasive breast cancer and DCIS that does not. This research will eventually allow us to spare a large majority of DCIS patients from adjuvant treatments like radiotherapy and Tamoxifen and thereby avoid side effects of these treatments. Mangesh was awarded a PhD by the University of London in January 2016 for this work. His other research interests include cancer epidemiology and prevention, particularly the role of aspirin in cancer prevention; prognostic biomarkers in prostate cancer; and clinical trials in breast cancer. Mangesh serves on the steering or data monitoring committees of several multi-national clinical trials. He also serves as the Deputy Director (Clinical) of the Cancer Prevention Trials Unit (King's Health Partners) and holds a Visiting Senior Lecturer position at King's College London.

Jane Warwick

Jane has over 25 years' experience in medical statistics, epidemiology and clinical trials. Her first post in medical statistics was at the Cancer Research Campaign Clinical Trials Unit at the University of Birmingham where she specialised in gynaecological oncology and developed a particular interest in ovarian cancer. After completing her PhD in 2001 she joined the Cancer Research UK Centre for Cancer Prevention, Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, Queen Mary University of London where for ten years she worked with Professor Stephen Duffy on the evaluation of breast screening programmes and breast cancer aetiology and with Professor Jack Cuzick on breast cancer prevention and models to predict breast cancer risk. In 2011 she moved to Imperial Clinical Trials Unit, Imperial College London, where she led the statistics team and gained further experience of Phase II and III trials in a variety of clinical areas, including cancer, HIV, mental health, vascular surgery and critical care, and of Bayesian methods for adaptive trial designs. Her contribution to the IBIS project, specifically the design and analysis of the mammographic density sub-studies and the development of the methodology for incorporating mammographic density into the IBIS breast cancer risk evaluation model) was recognised by Cancer Research UK in 2014 when the IBIS trials team (led by Professor Jack Cuzick) was awarded the Translational Cancer Research Prize. In the same year, Jane moved to Warwick CTU, where she gained further leadership experience and worked predominantly on trials in mental health and orthopaedic surgery, gaining promotion to Professor of Clinical Trials Statistics in June 2018. Most recently Jane has joined the CPTU team as statistical consultant, where she hopes to use her wealth of experience to facilitate the development, delivery, analysis and publication of high-quality clinical trials.