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In 2024, our TOUR team was nominated  for the Collaborative Research Excellence award in the Research category of the annual Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine Staff Awards at King’s College London.

“A beacon of excellence for clinical and translational research, the TOUR team continues to go from strength to strength, providing invaluable research and translation across King’s Health Partners, and is core to the innovative Guy’s Cancer Real World Evidence Programme. Over the past year, this multi-disciplinary team of largely early career researchers has grown and sustained a very wide range of high-quality research activities focussed on improving the care of cancer patients locally and internationally. Their work spans a broad range of clinical fields, from pre-doctoral fellowships for nurses and physiotherapists to database support for various cancer studies and other medical conditions. The team is a huge asset to the Faculty.”

Following this nomination, we reviewed all our activities and decided to rebrand as to reflect all of these amazing research efforts with patients at the centre of everything we do. We are proud to announce that going forward TOUR stands for: Transforming cancer OUtcomes through Research.

The TOUR team aims to use science to improve healthcare outcomes by translating oncology research into clinical practice. TOUR is led by Professor Mieke Van Hemelrijck, and comprises a team of quantitative and qualitative researchers, clinicians, students, research nurses, trial coordinators, and database managers who are active across the field of translational oncology research.

The translational research work of the group encompasses a heterogeneous set of activities with clinical cancer epidemiology at the core. Their unique multidisciplinary expertise and collaborations provide a methodology for researching prevention, early diagnosis and detection, treatment outcomes, and living with and beyond cancer. Their work demonstrates the role of clinical epidemiology across the entire cancer patient pathway.

TOUR activities2

Prof Van Hemelrijck is supported in her leadership by Senior Research Fellows, with diverse expertise:

  • Louis Fox: Quality of Life Research Lead
  • Gincy George: Senior Epidemiologist – Real World Evidence Partnerships Lead
  • Saran Green: Patient and Public Involvement/Engagement Lead
  • Anna Haire: Senior Study Coordinator – Bladder Cancer Lead
  • Charlotte Moss: PROMs and Clinical Database Management Lead
  • Beth Russell: Senior Epidemiologist – Real World Evidence Lead
  • Harriet Wylie: Senior Study Coordinator – Prostate Cancer Lead

Moreover, Prof Van Hemelrijck leads Guy’s Cancer Real World Evidence (RWE) Programme together with Dr Anne Rigg from Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. The programme aims to amplify Guy’s Cancer RWE data science capability and facilitate addressing answering challenging cancer research questions. The overall aim of Guy’s Cancer RWE Programme is to drive world class patient centred research.

The TOUR team is also part of the Centre for Cancer, Society, and Public Health, which includes other research groups and jointly focuses on research related to the control of risk-factors and the prevention of cancer, the early diagnosis and detection of cancer and pre-cancer, patients’ experiences of treatment and care and inequalities in their prognosis, treatment, and survival.

More news on our recent achievements and activities can be found on our Twitter page as well as within the sections on Projects, Activities, and Education below.


 

Short Course in collaboration with the Karolinska Institute:

Clinical Cancer Epidemiology: From Prevention to Treatment and Patient Care.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, epidemiology has become a much better known discipline. However, in clinical cancer research, we need epidemiology throughout the entire patient pathway.

The course will introduce the importance of clinical cancer epidemiology while keeping the clinical impact of the discipline at the centre.There will be clinical guest lectures highlighting how clinical epidemiological methodology has led to studies of important clinical impact for people with cancer as well as discussions on different components of clinical epidemiology and how they interact with various other disciplines. There will also be opportunities to present your research ideas and get feedback from experts in the field.

Course dates

  • Friday June 14th 2024 (hybrid meeting at Karolinska Institute)
  • Thursday September 5th 2024 - virtual meeting
  • Tuesday October 15th 2024 - virtual meeting
  • Tuesday November 5th 2024 - virtual meeting
  • Thursday December 5th 2024 (hybrid meeting at King’s College London)

Note: Time zone is UK.

For full details of this course, please visit the course page.


 

National and international collaborations:

The TOUR team is part of a diverse set of collaborative research initiatives, of which a few are listed below:

Prostate Cancer

  • PIONEER – European Network of Excellence for Big Data in Prostate Cancer
  • ReIMAGINE – Correcting 40 years of risk stratification error in Prosate Cancer
  • GAP3 Consortium – Active Surveillance for Prostate Cancer
  • Stockholm 0 – Collaboration with the Karolinska Institute on Drug Repurposing for Prostate Cancer
  • Movember GAP4 INTERVAL trial – Exercise intervention for prostate cancer
  • Movember IRONMAN – International Registry of men with metastatic prostate cancer
  • PCASTT

Bladder Cancer

Kidney Cancer

  • TracerX – Trial to define drivers and intratumour heterogeneity in renal cell carcinoma and determine the relationship between heterogeneity and disease stage, clinical outcome and treatment response.

Other Cancers

  • AMORIS – Collaboration with the Karolinska Institute to investigate the role of a diverse set of biomarkers in risk and development of different types of cancer.
  • Implementation of Patient Reported Outcome Measures

People

Danielle Crawley

Clinical Lecturer

Louis Fox

Quality of Life Research Lead

Gincy  George

Senior Epidemiologist – Real World Evidence Partnerships Lead

Saran  Green

Patient and Public Involvement/Engagement Manager

Anna Haire

Senior Trial Coordinator

Jasmine Handford

Clinical Database Manager for Head & Neck Cancer

Projects

Guy's Hospital
Guy’s Cancer Real World Evidence Programme

Guy’s Cancer Real World Evidence (RWE) Programme has been established as a strategy to improve and internalise rich datasets within Guy’s Cancer, thereby amplifying our RWE data science capabilities and allowing us to work on challenging cancer research questions. The Programme has been developed and implemented as a joint venture between the TOUR team of King’s College London and colleagues in the Oncology department of Guy’s Hospital.

Field of yellow flowers
Quality of Life Research

The TOUR group both lead on, and participate in, numerous projects in collaboration with the EORTC’s Quality of Life Group and The Royal Marsden Hospital, aiming to apply mixed methods to develop and evaluate robust tools for the measurement of health-related quality of life in cancer. These studies are often highly international in nature and domains under the group’s quality of life portfolio include immunotherapy, survivorship, advanced melanoma, testicular cancer, rare cancers, and groups at hereditary risk of cancer. In addition, as part of the Guy’s Cancer RWE Programme, the team are involved in various initiatives at Guy’s Cancer Centre working to implement routine patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) collection into clinical practice.

clinical trials
Trials

The TOUR team also includes a clinical research team which runs a series of trials and observational studies ranging from biomarkers studies to registry studies and clinical interventions including supervised exercise programmes.

Publications

An overview of all our publications can be found on PubMed.

Awards

The TOUR team holds a variety of research grants to support their ongoing research. Please see below an overview of current grants:

Grants for which TOUR is a principal investigator:

2024-2025

Action Bladder Cancer UK, “Bladder Cancer Cos Outcome Set (B-COS): the patient perspective”, £2500.

2024

King’s Global Engagement Fund, “Exercise Oncology: An emerging role for exercise in immunotherapy – Pilot Study”, £15,216.

2024-2026

Guy’s Cancer Charity, “REDCap database for advanced cancer therapies (cell therapies)”, £112,260.

2024-2028

University of Bonn, “Water III study”, £229,385.

2024-2025

Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, “Implementation of a digital exercise intervention to promote and sustain exercise behaviour in prostate cancer patients on androgen deprivation therapy to improve outcomes”, £92,085.

2024

Amsterdam University Medical Centres, “Core Outcome Set Localised Kidney Cancer”, £18,534.

2023-2024

Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, “CoSTAR and Distance Phase 1a”, £76,977.

2023-2025

GSTT Cancer & Surgery, “Guy’s Cancer Real World Evidence programme”. £400,000

2023-2024

Bayer AG, “Real-world sequence of systemic therapies and outcomes in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer receiving lines of treatment beyond 1st”, £240,380.

2023-2024

Guy’s Cancer Charity, “Guy's Cancer Real World Evidence: An Opportunity For Cardio-Oncology”, £76,854.

2023-2024

Guy’s Cancer Charity, “Guy’s Cancer Real World Evidence: Patient and Public Involvement/Engagement (PPIE) Strategy”, £46,427.

2023-2025

European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), “Facilitating the representation of EORTC QoL Modules and items in common data models.”, Euro 256,163.

2022-2024

Action Bladder Cancer UK, “Understanding the barriers and facilitators to patients accepting a novel diagnostic technique replacing the gold standard”, £5,500.

2022-2025

European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), “Patient organization versus hospital-based recruitment strategies for EORTC QLG studies.”, Euro 362,751.

2021-2025

South East London Cancer Alliance – PhD Funding, “Clinical Evaluation of Guy’s Rapid Diagnostic Clinic”, £103,240.

2021-2025

European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), “A phase 1-2 study to identify which HRQoL issues need to be assessed for cancer patients on immune checkpoint inhibitors”, £177,476.

 

Grants for which TOUR is a co-investigator:

2024-2026

European Hematology Association, “The International Integrative Innovative Immunology for MDS (i4MDS)”, £91,518 (PI: Shahram Kordasti, King’s College London).

2023-2024

LifeArc, “Expansion of analyses for TACTIC-R Trial”, of which £72,386 to TOUR (PI: Shahram Kordasti, King’s College London).

2022-2026

Cancer Research UK Project Grant, “Diagnosing Bladder cancer – Evaluating the role of urinary biomarker test in the reconfiguration of haematuria clinic investigations (BC-Recon), of which £301,340 to TOUR (PI: Rik Bryan, University of Birmingham).

2022-2024

NIHR Research for Patient Benefit (PI: Kathy Wong), “A feasibility study comparing UroLIFT with Transurethral Resection of Prostate ahead of Radiotherapy in men with bladder outlet obstruction (CO-STAR)”, of which £30,765 to TOUR.

 

Activities

Patient and public engagement
Patient and public involvement

The TOUR team is committed to PPIE at all stages of research. Patient and Public Involvement /Engagement (PPIE) means actively working in partnership with patients and members of the public to plan, manage, design and carry out research. It is “Research being carried out ‘with’ or ‘by’ members of the public rather than ‘to’, ‘about’ or ‘for’ them” - INVOLVE. The below two publications as well as some examples of our activities illustrate our commitment to PPIE.

Tissue isn't an issue video still
Health Is Wealth: banking on your support

In collaboration with the KHP Biobank, TOUR launched the ‘Health Is Wealth: banking on your support,’ public engagement series in response to recommendations by our patients on increasing internal and external visibility of our work as well as to raise awareness on how the biobank contributes to medical research and personalised healthcare. Our first event, ‘Tissue isn’t an issue,’ an Interactive information and awareness stand with various hands-on activities to understand the role of biobanking in medicine was held on Valentine’s Day 2024 in the Research Zone, Welcome Village, of the Guy’s Cancer Centre.

ARUARES The Apricot
ARUARES

Our Patient and Public Involvement Cancer Research Group for Diverse Backgrounds (Diverse PPI) developed a simple yet powerful and innovative resource: ARUARES, The Apricot. This tool supports researchers engaging diverse communities with no additional costs or resources. The resource was introduced at their first public engagement event in April 2023, “About us, By us…” ARUARES, The Apricot is an acronym which serves as a mental reminder/note when seeking to engage diverse communities. The members have shown that inclusivity does not always require extra resources but rather mindful consideration.

News

King's researchers chair session exploring pandemic impact on cancer research priorities

Professors Mieke Van Hemelrijck and Professor Richard Sullivan chaired a highlight session exploring the impact of COVID-19 on cancer research priorities at...

World Cancer Congress Geneva

Guy's Cancer Real World Evidence shortlisted for the 2022 HSJ Partnership Awards

Guy’s Cancer Real World Evidence, a collaboration between epidemiologists at King’s and clinicians at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, has been...

Mieke Van Hemelrijck

Events

28Feb

7th Bladder Cancer Translational Research Meeting

The Bladder Cancer Research Centre (University of Birmingham) and the Transforming cancer OUtcomes through Research (TOUR) team (King’s College London and...

Please note: this event has passed.

15Mar

6th Bladder Cancer Translational Research Meeting

The Bladder Cancer Research Centre (University of Birmingham) and the Translational Oncology & Urology Research (TOUR) team (King’s College London and Guy’s...

Please note: this event has passed.

23Nov

Inaugural Lecture: Professors Gudrun Kunst & Mieke Van Hemelrijck

Inspiring talks from some of our brightest minds

Please note: this event has passed.

Education and PhD students

The TOUR team currently has eight PhD students and one MD student:

  • Maria Monroy Iglesias (October 2021; full-time): Clinical evaluation of Guy’s Rapid Diagnostic Clinic
  • Anna Haire (June 2022; part-time): Impact of a bladder cancer diagnosis on patient’s mental wellbeing
  • Jasmine Handford (October 2023; full-time): Clinical epidemiology of head and neck cancer
  • Rebecca Martin (June 2023; part-time): Developing a complex intervention to support sexual recovery in female patients with bladder cancer
  • Ziying Zhang (January 2023; full-time): Immunome and Clinical based Stratification Modelling for myelodysplastic neoplasms
  • Saran Green (February 2024; full-time): Involving Patient Organisations into the recruitment for clinical oncology studies
  • Emily Curtis (June 2024; part-time): Implementation of a supervised exercise intervention for prostate cancer into standard clinical care
  • Ailbhe Lawlor (June 2024; part-time): Supportive care needs of pregnant women with cancer
  • Eleni Josephides (May 2022; full-time): Clinical epidemiology of lung cancer

Apart from supervising PhD and MD students, the TOUR team is also heavily involved in the teaching activities of the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine.

We run the following BSc courses:

  • Introduction to Clinical Exercise Epidemiology
  • Introduction to Epidemiology and Population Sciences
  • Advanced Epidemiology and Population Sciences
  • Cancer Society and Public Health

We supervise students for the following Modules and Degrees:

  • MRes in Translational Cancer Medicine
  • BSc Sport and Exercise Medical Sciences
  • iBSc Module of Surgical Sciences

We teach epidemiology and statistics for the following BSc and MSc Modules:

  • Principles of Neurobiological Research
  • Cancer Genetics
  • Fundamentals of Translational Cancer Medicine
  • Preventive Medicine and Exercise Prescription
  • Academic Foundation Programme FY2

 

 

People

Danielle Crawley

Clinical Lecturer

Louis Fox

Quality of Life Research Lead

Gincy  George

Senior Epidemiologist – Real World Evidence Partnerships Lead

Saran  Green

Patient and Public Involvement/Engagement Manager

Anna Haire

Senior Trial Coordinator

Jasmine Handford

Clinical Database Manager for Head & Neck Cancer

Projects

Guy's Hospital
Guy’s Cancer Real World Evidence Programme

Guy’s Cancer Real World Evidence (RWE) Programme has been established as a strategy to improve and internalise rich datasets within Guy’s Cancer, thereby amplifying our RWE data science capabilities and allowing us to work on challenging cancer research questions. The Programme has been developed and implemented as a joint venture between the TOUR team of King’s College London and colleagues in the Oncology department of Guy’s Hospital.

Field of yellow flowers
Quality of Life Research

The TOUR group both lead on, and participate in, numerous projects in collaboration with the EORTC’s Quality of Life Group and The Royal Marsden Hospital, aiming to apply mixed methods to develop and evaluate robust tools for the measurement of health-related quality of life in cancer. These studies are often highly international in nature and domains under the group’s quality of life portfolio include immunotherapy, survivorship, advanced melanoma, testicular cancer, rare cancers, and groups at hereditary risk of cancer. In addition, as part of the Guy’s Cancer RWE Programme, the team are involved in various initiatives at Guy’s Cancer Centre working to implement routine patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) collection into clinical practice.

clinical trials
Trials

The TOUR team also includes a clinical research team which runs a series of trials and observational studies ranging from biomarkers studies to registry studies and clinical interventions including supervised exercise programmes.

Publications

An overview of all our publications can be found on PubMed.

Awards

The TOUR team holds a variety of research grants to support their ongoing research. Please see below an overview of current grants:

Grants for which TOUR is a principal investigator:

2024-2025

Action Bladder Cancer UK, “Bladder Cancer Cos Outcome Set (B-COS): the patient perspective”, £2500.

2024

King’s Global Engagement Fund, “Exercise Oncology: An emerging role for exercise in immunotherapy – Pilot Study”, £15,216.

2024-2026

Guy’s Cancer Charity, “REDCap database for advanced cancer therapies (cell therapies)”, £112,260.

2024-2028

University of Bonn, “Water III study”, £229,385.

2024-2025

Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, “Implementation of a digital exercise intervention to promote and sustain exercise behaviour in prostate cancer patients on androgen deprivation therapy to improve outcomes”, £92,085.

2024

Amsterdam University Medical Centres, “Core Outcome Set Localised Kidney Cancer”, £18,534.

2023-2024

Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, “CoSTAR and Distance Phase 1a”, £76,977.

2023-2025

GSTT Cancer & Surgery, “Guy’s Cancer Real World Evidence programme”. £400,000

2023-2024

Bayer AG, “Real-world sequence of systemic therapies and outcomes in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer receiving lines of treatment beyond 1st”, £240,380.

2023-2024

Guy’s Cancer Charity, “Guy's Cancer Real World Evidence: An Opportunity For Cardio-Oncology”, £76,854.

2023-2024

Guy’s Cancer Charity, “Guy’s Cancer Real World Evidence: Patient and Public Involvement/Engagement (PPIE) Strategy”, £46,427.

2023-2025

European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), “Facilitating the representation of EORTC QoL Modules and items in common data models.”, Euro 256,163.

2022-2024

Action Bladder Cancer UK, “Understanding the barriers and facilitators to patients accepting a novel diagnostic technique replacing the gold standard”, £5,500.

2022-2025

European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), “Patient organization versus hospital-based recruitment strategies for EORTC QLG studies.”, Euro 362,751.

2021-2025

South East London Cancer Alliance – PhD Funding, “Clinical Evaluation of Guy’s Rapid Diagnostic Clinic”, £103,240.

2021-2025

European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), “A phase 1-2 study to identify which HRQoL issues need to be assessed for cancer patients on immune checkpoint inhibitors”, £177,476.

 

Grants for which TOUR is a co-investigator:

2024-2026

European Hematology Association, “The International Integrative Innovative Immunology for MDS (i4MDS)”, £91,518 (PI: Shahram Kordasti, King’s College London).

2023-2024

LifeArc, “Expansion of analyses for TACTIC-R Trial”, of which £72,386 to TOUR (PI: Shahram Kordasti, King’s College London).

2022-2026

Cancer Research UK Project Grant, “Diagnosing Bladder cancer – Evaluating the role of urinary biomarker test in the reconfiguration of haematuria clinic investigations (BC-Recon), of which £301,340 to TOUR (PI: Rik Bryan, University of Birmingham).

2022-2024

NIHR Research for Patient Benefit (PI: Kathy Wong), “A feasibility study comparing UroLIFT with Transurethral Resection of Prostate ahead of Radiotherapy in men with bladder outlet obstruction (CO-STAR)”, of which £30,765 to TOUR.

 

Activities

Patient and public engagement
Patient and public involvement

The TOUR team is committed to PPIE at all stages of research. Patient and Public Involvement /Engagement (PPIE) means actively working in partnership with patients and members of the public to plan, manage, design and carry out research. It is “Research being carried out ‘with’ or ‘by’ members of the public rather than ‘to’, ‘about’ or ‘for’ them” - INVOLVE. The below two publications as well as some examples of our activities illustrate our commitment to PPIE.

Tissue isn't an issue video still
Health Is Wealth: banking on your support

In collaboration with the KHP Biobank, TOUR launched the ‘Health Is Wealth: banking on your support,’ public engagement series in response to recommendations by our patients on increasing internal and external visibility of our work as well as to raise awareness on how the biobank contributes to medical research and personalised healthcare. Our first event, ‘Tissue isn’t an issue,’ an Interactive information and awareness stand with various hands-on activities to understand the role of biobanking in medicine was held on Valentine’s Day 2024 in the Research Zone, Welcome Village, of the Guy’s Cancer Centre.

ARUARES The Apricot
ARUARES

Our Patient and Public Involvement Cancer Research Group for Diverse Backgrounds (Diverse PPI) developed a simple yet powerful and innovative resource: ARUARES, The Apricot. This tool supports researchers engaging diverse communities with no additional costs or resources. The resource was introduced at their first public engagement event in April 2023, “About us, By us…” ARUARES, The Apricot is an acronym which serves as a mental reminder/note when seeking to engage diverse communities. The members have shown that inclusivity does not always require extra resources but rather mindful consideration.

News

King's researchers chair session exploring pandemic impact on cancer research priorities

Professors Mieke Van Hemelrijck and Professor Richard Sullivan chaired a highlight session exploring the impact of COVID-19 on cancer research priorities at...

World Cancer Congress Geneva

Guy's Cancer Real World Evidence shortlisted for the 2022 HSJ Partnership Awards

Guy’s Cancer Real World Evidence, a collaboration between epidemiologists at King’s and clinicians at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, has been...

Mieke Van Hemelrijck

Events

28Feb

7th Bladder Cancer Translational Research Meeting

The Bladder Cancer Research Centre (University of Birmingham) and the Transforming cancer OUtcomes through Research (TOUR) team (King’s College London and...

Please note: this event has passed.

15Mar

6th Bladder Cancer Translational Research Meeting

The Bladder Cancer Research Centre (University of Birmingham) and the Translational Oncology & Urology Research (TOUR) team (King’s College London and Guy’s...

Please note: this event has passed.

23Nov

Inaugural Lecture: Professors Gudrun Kunst & Mieke Van Hemelrijck

Inspiring talks from some of our brightest minds

Please note: this event has passed.

Education and PhD students

The TOUR team currently has eight PhD students and one MD student:

  • Maria Monroy Iglesias (October 2021; full-time): Clinical evaluation of Guy’s Rapid Diagnostic Clinic
  • Anna Haire (June 2022; part-time): Impact of a bladder cancer diagnosis on patient’s mental wellbeing
  • Jasmine Handford (October 2023; full-time): Clinical epidemiology of head and neck cancer
  • Rebecca Martin (June 2023; part-time): Developing a complex intervention to support sexual recovery in female patients with bladder cancer
  • Ziying Zhang (January 2023; full-time): Immunome and Clinical based Stratification Modelling for myelodysplastic neoplasms
  • Saran Green (February 2024; full-time): Involving Patient Organisations into the recruitment for clinical oncology studies
  • Emily Curtis (June 2024; part-time): Implementation of a supervised exercise intervention for prostate cancer into standard clinical care
  • Ailbhe Lawlor (June 2024; part-time): Supportive care needs of pregnant women with cancer
  • Eleni Josephides (May 2022; full-time): Clinical epidemiology of lung cancer

Apart from supervising PhD and MD students, the TOUR team is also heavily involved in the teaching activities of the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine.

We run the following BSc courses:

  • Introduction to Clinical Exercise Epidemiology
  • Introduction to Epidemiology and Population Sciences
  • Advanced Epidemiology and Population Sciences
  • Cancer Society and Public Health

We supervise students for the following Modules and Degrees:

  • MRes in Translational Cancer Medicine
  • BSc Sport and Exercise Medical Sciences
  • iBSc Module of Surgical Sciences

We teach epidemiology and statistics for the following BSc and MSc Modules:

  • Principles of Neurobiological Research
  • Cancer Genetics
  • Fundamentals of Translational Cancer Medicine
  • Preventive Medicine and Exercise Prescription
  • Academic Foundation Programme FY2

 

 

Contact us

Saran Green - Patient and Public Involvement/Engagement Manager

Comprehensive Cancer Centre

3rd Floor, Bermondsey Wing
Guy's Hospital
London SE1 9RT