Visiting Research Associate
Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Coordinator
Visiting Research Associate
Database and Project Manager
Reader in Cancer Epidemiology
Honorary Research Associate
Uro-Oncology Programme
King’s Health Partners’ Uro-Oncology Cancer Programme is a multidisciplinary group of clinicians and scientists with expertise across the fields of epidemiology, bioinformatics and statistics, clinical medicine, cancer care, medical imaging and radionuclide therapy, cell and molecular biology and immunology, working together towards a common goal: to make life-altering discoveries for people affected by a urological cancer (i.e. prostate, bladder, kidney, testicular, or penile cancer). This Programme enables us to research all aspects of the cancers, which will create new knowledge and underpin our development of new treatments, with an aim of individualised medicine.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Patient and public involvement
The Translational Oncology and Urology Research (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.
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:
| 2019 |
Arcobaleno Cancer Trust, “The need for mental health support of bladder cancer patients”, £3,000
Action Bladder Cancer UK, Improving Outcomes for Patients Programme, “Addressing sexual function in post-cystectomy bladder cancer patients - an unmet need”, £4,760
Kidney Cancer UK, Project Grant, “Exploring and prioritising patient requirements during treatment decision making’’,£10,618
|
| 2019-2021 |
Cancer Research UK, Multidisciplinary Award, “New quantitative tools for precision medicine: overfitting correction in multivariate Cox analysis”, £169,658 (Co-PI: Prof Ton Coolen, KCL). |
| 2018-2021 |
Swedish Research Council, “Prostate Cancer Active Surveillance Trigger Trial – PCASTT”, £207,270. |
| 2017-2019 |
Dianne and Graham Roberts Charitable Settlement, “King’s Health Partners Bladder Cancer Biobank”, £500,000. |
| 2017-2020 |
Chris Cottrell and the Exercise Clinic Ltd, “Design of an exercise intervention to improve care for men with prostate cancer”, £72,000. |
| 2016-2019 |
Ferring Pharmaceuticals Independent Research Grant, “GnRH agonists versus antagonists:
Reducing cardiovascular risks in men with advanced prostate cancer?”, £169,500.
|
| 2016-2021 |
Movember Global Action Plan 4 - INTense Exercise foR surVivAL among men with Metastatic CastrateResistant Prostate Cancer (INTERVAL – MCRPC): A Multicenter, Randomized, Controlled, Phase III Study, £42,099. |
Grants for which TOUR is a co-investigator:
| 2019 |
UCL Partners, “PREFERRED: Prostate Cancer Risk Evaluation by Freehand transperinel sectoral versus evaluation of reduced biopsy: Randomisation for Effective Diagnosis. A randomised non-inferiority trial”, £20,000 (Co-PI: Rick Popert, GSTT).
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| 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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Grants for which TOUR is a co-applicant:
| 2019 |
Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity (PI: Paul Ross, Guy’s Hospital), “Establishment of a Naitonal Registry for mixed hepatocellular-cholangiocellular tumours (mHCC-CCA)”, £5,267.
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| 2018-2020 |
Cancer Research UK, Population Research Committee – Project Award (PI: Jesper Lagergren), “Circulating Sex Hormone Levels and the Risk of Oesophageal Adenocarcinoma”, £211,445.
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Bladder Cancer Translational Research Meeting 2020
The University of Birmingham and King’s Health Partners are organising their second Bladder Cancer Translational Research Meeting - a fully interactive bladder cancer clinical research meeting led by a wide international expert panel of clinicians and scientists in Birmingham, U.K
Find out more
Master Class in Clinical Epidemiology (27-28 February 2020)
This course aims to teach and improve the participants’ understanding of the basic methods in clinical epidemiology so that they can accurately review and help design good quality clinical research. As a result, the participants will have all basic skills in clinical epidemiology to also conduct high quality systematic reviews and potentially meta-analyses.
More information and registration details can be found here
The TOUR team currently has seven PhD students:
- Agustina Bessa (April 2018; part-time): Improving the bladder cancer patient experience
- Katharina Beyer (January 2019; part-time): Treatment choices for low-risk kidney cancer
- Louis Fox (April 2017; full-time): Enhancement of support for physical activity amongst men diagnosed with prostate cancer
- Maggie Josephs (September 2018; full-time): Immunosurveillance for bladder cancer
- E Lin (September 2018; full-time): The interaction between diabetes and prostate cancer
- Liam Mannion (July 2018; part-time): Optimising radiotherapy for bladder cancer patients
- Beth Russell (September 2017; full-time): Clinical outcomes for bladder cancer
Apart from supervising PhD 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:
- BSc Module of Research, Communication and Presentation Skills
- Scholarly projects Year 3 of MBBS Programme – Clinical audit of urological practice
- 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 and application in cancer diagnosis, screening and treatment
- iBSc Module of Surgical Sciences
Finally, we are engaged in educational activities for healthcare professionals through our patient and public involvement work. On 12 March 2020 we will be running on educational seminar on the “sexual health needs of bladder cancer patients”. The work is funded by Action Bladder Cancer UK.