Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Coordinator
Visiting Research Associate
Clinical Database Manager for Head & Neck Cancer
Database and Project Manager
Professor in Cancer Epidemiology
Honorary Research Associate
Prostate Cancer
The TOUR team conducts a variety of research project for prostate cancer ranging from early detection, to precision medicine, and survivorship. We are involved in large international Consortia such as the MRC Stratified Medicine Consortium ReIMAGINE, the Movember Foundation Global Action Plans, the IMI funded PIONEER Consortium of the European Association of Urology, the UK Biobank as well as international collaborations with the Karolinska Institute and Uppsala University in Sweden.
Bladder Cancer
Also for bladder cancer, the TOUR team is involved in a wide variety of research projects involving collaborators from the Universities of Aberdeen and Birmingham as well as the Universities of Lund and Uppsala in Sweden. Moreover, we are working closely with patient advocacy organisations to develop strategies to improve the patient experience of those diagnosed with bladder cancer.
Kidney Cancer
Together with collaborators from the Royal Marsden and the Royal Free, the TOUR team is working on clinical research aimed to improve the experience of those diagnosed with kidney cancer. We currently focus on how to better support patients with their treatment decisions options.
Other cancer types
In addition to urological cancers, the TOUR team also works with various colleagues at Guy’s Cancer and internationally on other tumour types. We are currently working on the effect of the immune system on carcinogenesis as well as clinical outcomes of gastro-intestinal cancers, lung cancer, and pancreatic cancer.
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:
| 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. |
| 2022-2023 |
Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, “Addressing the supportive care needs of men with testicular cancer by improving the patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) available to them.”, £72,099. |
| 2021-2023 |
Guy’s Cancer Charity, “Clinical data for Head and Neck Cancer” (Co-PI: Jean-Pierre Jennon), £130,000. |
| 2021-2022 |
Neuroendocrine Cancer UK, “Incidence and prevalence of neuroendocrine tumours in the UK”, £23,313. |
| 2021-2022 |
South East London Cancer Alliance, “Evaluation of inequalities in the impact of changes in cancer service delivery, treatment intensity and delay during the COVID-19 pandemic”, £50,000. |
| 2021-2025 |
South East London Cancer Alliance – PhD Funding, “Clinical Evaluation of Guy’s Rapid Diagnostic Clinic”, £103,240. |
| 2021-2023 |
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”, £119,423. |
Grants for which TOUR is a co-investigator:
| 2018-2023 |
IMI Big data for prostate cancer (PI: James N’Dow, EAU Guidelines Office), “PIONEER: Prostate Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Enhancement through the Power of Big Data in Europe”, €4,800,000.
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| 2018-2022 |
MRC Stratified Medicine (PI: Mark Emberton, UCL), “The exploitation of a novel image-based risk stratification tool in early prostate cancer – the RE-Imagine Consortium”, £5,179,123.
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| 2022 |
King’s Together, “Stratified prostate cancer diagnostics via liquid biopsy sampling using Raman spectroscopy for early-disease detection”, £20,000 (PI: Yvette Hancock, University of Newcastle).
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| 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), £ 301,340 (PI: Rik Bryan, University of Birmingham).
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| 2021-2023 |
NHS England/Improvement, “Optimisation and improvement of the clinical effectiveness of DPYD gene testing for patients with cancer”. £93,882 (PI: Sean Whitaker, GSTT).
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Grants for which TOUR is a co-applicant:
| 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)”, £30,764.37.
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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.
COVID-19 and Cancer
The TOUR team has been working with Guy’s Cancer Real World Evidence to establish an oncology database for COVID-19. Our collaborations have already resulted in a variety of research publications.
Patient and public involvement
The TOUR team is committed to PPI at all stages of research. Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) 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.
EORTC Quality of Life
TOUR is currently actively involved in several projects funded by the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) Quality of Life Group, which aim to develop and validate health-related quality of life scales for people living with cancer. The team are currently participating in international collaborations to produce quality of life scales for advanced melanoma patients, patients on immunotherapy, patients who are in the survivorship phase, and a patient satisfaction with care measure.
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.
The TOUR team currently has five PhD students and one MD student:
- Katharina Beyer (January 2019; part-time): Treatment choices for low-risk kidney cancer
- E Lin (September 2018; full-time): The interaction between diabetes and prostate cancer
- Charlotte Moss (April 2020; full-time): Implementation of patient reported outcome measures for cancer patients in standard care
- 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
- 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 courses:
We supervise students for the following Modules and Degrees:
- MRes in Translational Cancer Medicine
- iBSc Module of Surgical Sciences
We teach epidemiology and statistics for the following Modules:
- BSc Module of Biology of Cancer
- BSc Module of Neurobiology
- MSc Module of Molecular pathology of cancer
- iBSc Module of Surgical Sciences