ICR - The Institute of Cancer Research: Global Foundation

Professor Alan Ashworth FRS is Chief Executive of The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR). He is also Professor of Molecular Biology and Leader of the Gene Function team in The Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Centre at the ICR.

Professor Ashworth completed his undergraduate Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and Biochemistry at Imperial College and achieved his PhD in Biochemistry at University College London. He joined the ICR in 1986 as a Post Doctoral Scientist in the Section of Cell and Molecular Biology and in 1999 he was appointed the first Director of the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Centre. The Centre is now recognised internationally and has more than 120 scientists and researchers working on aspects of the disease ranging from basic molecular and cellular biology through to translational research and clinical trials. Professor Ashworth’s Directorship ended in January 2011 when he took up the position of Chief Executive of the ICR.

One of Professor Ashworth’s major contributions to cancer research has been his work on genes involved in cancer risk. He was a key part of the team that in 1995 discovered the gene BRCA2, which is linked to an increased risk of some types of cancers. Ten years later, Professor Ashworth identified a way to exploit genetic weaknesses in cancer cells including mutated BRCA2, leading to a new approach to cancer treatment.

His current research reflects his passion for the development of personalised cancer medicine, translating laboratory studies into improvements in patient care. He is also joint leader, with Professor Tony Swerdlow, of one of the world’s most comprehensive and largest (>100,000 participants), studies of breast cancer causation, the Breakthrough Generations Study.

Professor Ashworth is an elected member of EMBO and the Academy of Medical Sciences. His contributions to mammalian genetics and identification and study of inherited breast cancer susceptibility genes saw him elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2008. He has been the recipient of a number of scientific prizes and awards including The European Society of Medical Oncology Lifetime Achievement Award, the David T. Workman Memorial Award of the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation and the Meyenburg Foundation’s Cancer Research Award.

Dr. Gert Attard is playing a major role in developing the promising prostate cancer drug abiraterone, which early clinical trials suggest could treat up to 80 per cent of patients with the most aggressive – and previously drug-resistant - form of the disease.

Dr. Attard was recently appointed an Academic Clinical Lecturer at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR). He therefore dedicates half of his time to research efforts into identifying new ways to treat prostate cancer and the other half to clinical duties at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

After finishing his medical degree in Malta in 1999, Dr Attard began to specialise in internal medicine. But after his grandfather died of colon cancer, he decided to embark on a career in cancer research.

Dr. Attard joined The Institute of Cancer Research’s Drug Development Unit in 2004, completing his PhD under the supervision of ICR Professor of Molecular Biology Colin Cooper.

Dr. Attard ran the early clinical trials of abiraterone, a novel inhibitor of male hormones for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer, under the mentorship of Dr. Johann De Bono from the Drug Development Unit. He last year received a Young Investigator Award from the Prostate Cancer Foundation, Santa Monica, California, for this work. Dr. Attard has also recently published a study describing a new technique for studying abnormal genes in cancer cells isolated from the blood of prostate cancer patients.

He feels “extremely fortunate and honored to be involved in cancer research at these truly exciting times, after decades of work by scientists and doctors is now leading to the development of drugs that are truly helping our patients”.

Dr. Attard says he decided to continue his post-doctoral research at the ICR because it is “a world-class centre where groundbreaking discoveries are made on a weekly basis”.

“Several discoveries made at the ICR, including abiraterone acetate, are already helping our patients and I am confident that the ICR is going to continue to be a key world player in cancer research,” he says.

In his spare time, Dr. Attard windsurfs, sails and snowboards.

Dr. Udai Banerji ensures clinical trials at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) are carried out to the highest possible standard, and manages patients involved in trials. He forms a crucial link between the ICR’s Centre for Cancer Therapeutics, which develops anti-cancer agents, and the drug development unit in the ICR’s Section of Medicine, which carries out Phase I trials at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust to evaluate these new drugs. Dr. Banerji is also a Clinical Senior Lecturer in Medical Oncology through the ICR’s position as a college of the University of London.

Dr. Banerji completed his basic medical training in India and then worked briefly in the pharmaceutical industry, running oncology trials. He finished his medical oncology training at The Royal Marsden and gained a PhD in molecular pharmacology at the ICR focussing on the applications of heat shock protein (HSP) inhibitors in cancer. He has been at the ICR and the Royal Marsden in different capacities since 2000.

Dr. Banerji splits his time between the clinic and the laboratory. He is responsible for designing and supervising Phase I drug trials, and managing inpatients and outpatients trialing new cancer drugs. He has been involved in bringing many potentially important anti-cancer agents to the clinic. Among these are drugs that attack HSP90, a protein which cancer cells depend on, and other drugs that interfere with the P13Kinase pathway, which many cancer types “hijack” to enable them to grow and spread. His other clinical interests include RAF/MEK, a biological pathway that stimulates cell growth which is known to be important in about 30 per cent of human cancers, and inhibitors for HDAC, an enzyme involved in gene expression and an attractive anti-cancer target.

Dr. Banerji’s research focuses on developing new biomarkers – indicators of a person’s biological state. These include pharmacodynamic markers, tests which measure the biological effect of new treatments on the body, and predictive and prognostic biomarkers that can be used to work out whether a patient is likely to respond to a particular anti-cancer agent or if a particular biological characteristic of a tumor will make it behave aggressively.  

Dr. Banerji enjoys “working in a dynamic environment conducive to bringing research from the laboratory to patients”. His key goals are to accelerate the process by which new anti-cancer drugs are brought to patients, while also learning how existing drugs can be used more efficiently.

"We ensure clinical trials of new drugs are properly designed and the results accurately measured, so we can rely on the findings and make sure patients are receiving the best possible treatment options,” he says.

Outside work, Dr. Banerji’s hobbies include distance running, mountaineering and playing string instruments.

Dr. Louis Chesler is working to develop new drugs for children suffering cancers that respond poorly to existing treatment, including the rare solid tumor neuroblastoma, muscle cancer rhabdomyosarcoma and the common brain tumor medulloblastoma. He leads the Neuroblastoma Drug Development Team within the ICR’s Section of Pediatric Oncology.

South African-born Dr. Chesler completed his early scientific and medical training in the United States, taking his Bachelor of Science (Honors) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his MD and PhD at Northwestern University in Chicago. During this time he also worked for the US government’s National Institute of Health and National Cancer Institute as an Intramural Fellow. In 1995, he joined the University of California, San Francisco, working as a pediatric oncology consultant and running a neuroblastoma research program, before moving to the ICR in 2007 as a Senior Clinical Lecturer.

Dr. Chesler was attracted to pediatric cancer research because it allows him to make a long-lasting contribution to children’s lives. “We have patients who go on to graduate high school, attend university and get married - seeing them have their own children is amazing, the most rewarding of all,” he says.

But relapses are common with pediatric cancers, Dr. Chesler says, and the high-dose therapies required for treatment in this situation can have serious side-effects including long term disability, organ dysfunction and even a second cancer. Dr. Chesler and his team are developing drugs specifically targeted at children’s cancers, as most drugs currently given to children were originally designed for adults. “The ICR is known for its excellent work in the development of novel targeted chemotherapies, which is an area that has great potential,” Dr. Chesler says.

Part of Dr. Chesler’s work includes investigating the MYCN gene, which is necessary for normal growth and nervous system development but can cause aggressive childhood cancers if it malfunctions. He is developing new drugs that target this gene, which he hopes will have fewer side-effects than existing treatments. Dr. Chesler hopes a drug developed in his own lab will one day lead to substantially improved survival rates in clinical trials. “Our current work should be on the right track to achieving that,” he says.

“Ideally I would like to help achieve for children what has been achieved for adults with chronic myeloid leukemia. The drug Gleevec is a one-a-day pill that comes without the side-effects associated with previous treatments – we need a Gleevec for children,” he says.

Dr. Chesler believes the ICR’s close links with industry and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust has created a new model of efficiency for drug development. “This partnership is unique and allows me to devote most of my time to laboratory research while retaining significant clinical involvement on the pediatric oncology ward,” he says.

Dr. Chesler is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research and the American Association of Pediatrics and on the editorial board for several peer-reviewed journals. Away from work, Dr. Chesler enjoys visiting historic buildings and cultural sites in the UK, and cycling.

David Dearnaley is developing and assessing new radiotherapy techniques and helping to care for patients with urological cancer, including cancers of the prostate, testes, bladder, kidney and penis. He is a Professor of Uro-Oncology and Honorary Consultant Clinical Oncologist at the Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

Professor Dearnaley has been central to the development of better radiotherapy treatments for prostate cancer, including a high-tech method called IMRT which uses 3D modelling to target radiation precisely to the tumour shape. It reduces damage to healthy tissue, which means higher doses can be given without increasing side effects.

Professor Dearnaley first began treating patients using IMRT nine years ago, and the technology has since been adopted across the country. He is now running a major trial in 24 of Britain’s 58 treatment centres looking at whether more patients can be cured without an increase in side-effects by giving larger doses of radiation but in fewer treatments.

 “In the future I would like to make further improvements in our radiotherapy techniques for prostate cancer, and get those introduced nationally – and I’m very hopeful that we can achieve this,” he says.

He is running several other patient trials involving prostate and testicular cancer, and among his projects is the development of a rectal device to localise the prostate, allowing doctors to better target treatment.

Professor Dearnaley became interested in radiotherapy while studying physics at Cambridge University and working over summer in a university hospital radiotherapy department. He switched to a medical degree, later graduating with a Masters of Arts and a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery in 1975. Professor Dearnaley was granted membership to the Royal College of Physicians in 1978, and began his research career in immuno-pathology and oncology while studying for a Doctor of Medicine in Cambridge, which he completed in 1984. He was admitted to the Royal College of Radiologists in 1985 and the Royal College of Physicians in 1994.

Professor Dearnaley joined the ICR almost 30 years ago, and says it remains the best place for him to working on improving cancer treatments. He is a former head of the Urology Unit at The Royal Marsden and past chair of the UK National Cancer Research Institute Prostate Group. He currently chairs the ICR and The Royal Marsden Hospital’s Committee for Clinical Research, and is also Chair of the Urology Tumour Working Group within the South West London Cancer Network, which links and assesses organisations providing cancer care to ensure high standards.

Professor Dearnaley has already run a marathon to raise money for the ICR, and in 2009 is taking part in sponsored skydive Jump 100 to mark the organisation’s centenary. “Hopefully I’ll be looked after by my three guardian angel daughters who have decided to jump with me,” he says.

Dr. Johann de Bono is creating new molecular targeted therapies to improve treatment for prostate cancer patients. Molecular targeted therapies differ from traditional treatments such as chemotherapy in that they are designed to act on only cancer cells and minimize damage to healthy cells. Dr. de Bono has been involved in developing more than 100 potential new drugs over the past decade, several of which are now available to patients, and is currently evaluating more than 20 drugs in early clinical trials. One of these drugs is abiraterone, which has the potential to treat up to 80 per cent of patients with aggressive and previously drug resistant prostate cancer.

Dr. de Bono was born and raised in Malta, and graduated from Glasgow University in 1989 with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery. He became a member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1992, and completed his PhD and MSc at the Beatson Institute of Cancer Research in Glasgow in 1997.

He trained as a medical oncologist between 1996 and 2000, spending part of the time learning about clinical trial design in Seattle, United States. This training lead to three years at the Institute for Drug Development in San Antonio, Texas, which Dr de Bono says was an invaluable experience that gave him an “outstanding blueprint” for running similar programs.

Dr. de Bono joined The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust in 2003 as a Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology. As well as research, he is involved in training and supervising PhD and MD (Res) research students and treating patients with castration resistant prostate cancer.

Dr. de Bono has received many awards during his career, holds editorial roles at peer-reviewed journals and is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (London) and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. He is the UK European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) representative and currently sits on the ESMO Board of Directors as well as the NCRI Prostate Cancer Clinical Studies Group.

Dr. de Bono is married to Hazel, who is Scottish, and has three children. He enjoys football and has been a Liverpool FC fan for more than 30 years. He collects jazz, blues and classical music, enjoys cycling, hill-walking and chess.

Professor Nandita deSouza is the lead academic radiologist at The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

She is a Professor in Translational Imaging and co-director of the Cancer Research UK Clinical Magnetic Resonance Research Group at the ICR. In this role Professor deSouza co-ordinates multi-disciplinary research projects involving clinical medicine, physics, biochemistry and engineering that are aimed at improving patient care.

Her research has primarily focused on using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to identify biological indicators of a patient’s prognosis and likely response to treatment and to improve techniques for diagnosing cancer, including using robotic devices to better target biopsies.

Professor deSouza has pioneered the use of endocavitary probes in MRI. These imaging devices can be inserted into the body to provide high-quality pictures of cancer tissue and track chemical changes within tumors. This not only provides a more accurate picture of the tumor – to help, for example, in planning surgery for cervical cancer that preserves fertility – but also gives clues on how the tumor will behave. This can be used to assess, for example, whether early-stage prostate cancer will progress and cause symptoms.

“The diagnostic information obtained with these techniques is unrivalled by other imaging methods,” she says.

Professor deSouza’s impressive results to date have been instrumental in securing current grants of more than £13 million, which will be used to establish an imaging research center with state-of-the-art imaging equipment that will ensure the ICR stays at the forefront of such research.

Professor deSouza completed her medical training in 1983 at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and a Fellow of the Royal College of Radiologists. She cemented her interest in research through a Doctor of Medicine, which she completed in 1996 while a Senior Research Fellow at Hammersmith Hospital’s Robert Steiner Magnetic Resonance Unit. In 1995, Professor deSouza took up the post of Senior Lecturer at the Imperial College School of Medicine and Royal Postgraduate Medical School, while continuing her work at the hospital. In 2000 she was appointed a Reader in Imaging at Imperial College, and moved to the ICR in this position in 2004.

Professor deSouza has a “major interest” in mentorship for women in academic medicine and has worked through the Women in Academic Medicine Committee to develop a code for part-time and flexible training for academics. In addition, she supervises a number of PhD and MD students. She also lectures widely to national and international audiences and is involved in developing guidelines for gynecological cancer care.

Professor deSouza is married with one daughter. She lists her hobbies as walking and enjoying her daughter’s performances in classical music.

Professor Rosalind Eeles is Professor of Oncogenetics at The Institute of Cancer Research. Her research interest is in cancer genetics and its application to cancer care. Her laboratory programme is in genetic predisposition to prostate cancer and she is the primary investigator (PI) of the UK's largest effort to find genetic determinants which increase prostate cancer risk (UK Genetic Prostate Cancer Study). She is the founder of the international PRACTICAL prostate cancer genetic association consortium which validates prostate cancer germline risk variants. This is to enable refined risk prediction, targeted screening, prevention and treatment to be developed in this disease.

She undertakes translational research in individuals with genetic predisposition to breast and prostate cancers. She is the genetics lead on the MARIBS study of MRI breast screening in high risk women and is PI of the IMPACT and PROFILE studies: targeted prostate cancer screening studies in men with genetic predisposition to the disease.  

She has been on several genetics advisory committees and edited the special edition of Familial Cancer: ‘Cancer Genetics: New Ways of Working’ which reported on models of delivery of cancer genetics services.

“I have particularly enjoyed being involved in policy development at government level as this has the potential to reach many individuals,” Professor Eeles says.

She chose to work at The Institute of Cancer Research because it enables basic research findings to be translated into benefit for patients.

In her spare time, Professor Eeles grows orchids and enjoys reading, music and art. She is interested in fashion design and is a member of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Melvyn (Mel) Greaves is working to unravel the causes of childhood leukemia by examining the genetic influences and biological pathways that lead to the disease. He is a Professor of Cell Biology and Chairman of the Section of Haemato-Oncology at The Institute of Cancer Research.

Professor Greaves has worked at the ICR since 1984, when he joined to establish the first Leukaemia Research Fund Centre (for Cell and Molecular Biology). Earlier in his career Professor Greaves pioneered methods to differentiate between types of leukaemia, which improved understanding of the disease and allowed treatments to be better tailored to patients.

Professor Greaves and his team made a major discovery at the ICR in the 1990s when studies on identical twins and neonatal blood spots identified mutations that initiated leukemia before birth. He has been trying to work out what triggers the clinical emergence of leukemia when children are between two and five years old and accumulated evidence that incriminates an abnormal immune response to infection and the cytokine molecule TGF beta.

Professor Greaves says a major goal is to confirm the role that common childhood infections play in the development of leukaemia. He is looking for more evidence that children exposed to infections as babies develop a normal immune response and receive some protection against leukemia, while children who are not exposed until later in life – generally those from affluent societies - are at higher risk. Inherited susceptibility may also play a role and Professor Greaves is studying this in collaboration with the ICR’s Section of Genetics (in particular Professor Richard Houlston’s Molecular and Population Genetics Team).

Professor Greaves has a broad educational background, initially training in zoology and immunology in the sixties at University College in London and Stockholm. He was drawn into cancer research in the mid-1970s when, as a young father, he visited a cancer ward at a London hospital and met children stricken with leukemia. At the time little was known about the disease, and Professor Greaves began a lifelong study – initially at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund - into its biology in the hope of improving patient diagnosis, treatment options and ultimately prevention.

His research at the ICR has been recognised by many national and international awards including the José Carreras Award, the British Society for Haematology Gold Medal and the King Faisal International Prize for Medicine. Professor Greaves is an Honorary Member of the Royal College of Physicians, a Fellow of the United Kingdom Academy of Medical Sciences and was elected to The Royal Society in 2003.

Outside leukemia research, Professor Greaves has broad and eclectic interests in evolutionary biology, cancer and medicine and wrote the popular science book Cancer. The Evolutionary Legacy (Oxford University Press), which has been translated into five foreign languages and Braille. His latest book is White Blood. Personal Journeys with Childhood Leukaemia (World Scientific). Mel enjoys classical music, opera, the theatre, many sports (all too passively now) and being a grandfather.

Dr. Kevin Harrington specializes in developing new treatments using viruses that selectively destroy cancer cells. He is a Senior Lecturer at The Institute of Cancer Research and an Honorary Consultant Clinical Oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

Dr. Harrington studied medicine at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, and began focusing on head and neck cancer while a PhD student at Hammersmith Hospital. He completed post doctoral research in molecular medicine at the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota, before joining the ICR in 2001 as Targeted Therapy Team Leader within the Section of Cell and Molecular Biology.

He is currently working with a range of viruses that are able to grow in - and kill - cancer cells, but not normal healthy cells. Some of these viruses have naturally evolved to grow preferentially in cancer cells because of the cells’ specific genetic defects; others have been genetically engineered to grow selectively in cancer cells. Dr. Harrington hopes new treatments using these viruses will improve patients’ cure rates and have fewer side-effects compared to current therapies.

He says his specialization area of head and neck cancers is in particular need of extensive further research, as it represents a diverse group of diseases with varied challenges for treatment and generally poor survival rates. “There is a real need to improve treatment options,” Dr. Harrington says.

Much of Dr. Harrington’s laboratory work is immediately translated into clinical trials at The Royal Marsden, most often in patients with head and neck cancers and melanomas. Dr. Harrington says the ICR’s partnership with The Royal Marsden allows him to conduct innovative laboratory research and apply it in the clinical setting, achieving “real patient benefit”.

The virus therapies developed are generally given in combination with standard anti-cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Dr. Harrington’s research has shown that some viruses can make cancer cells more sensitive to radiation; while the radiation may also favorably alter the effect of some viruses on cancer cells.

One promising treatment is a reovirus (a tumor-specific virus) which Phase I and II trials demonstrated was targeting tumors after intravenous injection. In 2009, the Federal Drug Administration approved a Phase III trial of this virus in the USA.

“One of the greatest challenges we have faced is working out how to inject these viruses into patients so they are able to reach the tumors and kill them efficiently, before being inactivated by the immune system,” Dr. Harrington says.

A second avenue of research involves a genetically-modified herpes simplex virus (cold sore virus) given by direct injection into the tumor. As well as killing tumor cells, this modified virus has the added benefit of expressing a protein that stimulates the immune system. A number of trials are underway involving this virus in combination with other treatments for patients with several cancer types including breast, head and neck and melanoma.

Dr. Harrington is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and a Fellow of the Royal College of Radiologists. In his infrequent spare time, he enjoys gardening, playing and watching football, and reading.

Professor Alan Horwich is Chairman of The Institute of Cancer Research’s Section of Radiotherapy. One of the Section’s main research areas focuses on evaluating and improving conformal radiotherapy techniques, in which radiation is precisely targeted at tumors to enable a higher dose while reducing damage to surrounding normal cells.

The section is developing the best way to define the exact tumor location, size and shape, known as target volume, and assessing different methods of tailoring treatment - using medical imaging and computer modelling - to patients. They are also researching radiation beam delivery techniques and making sure new methods are safe for patients.

Professor Horwich also holds senior management roles at the ICR as Head of Clinical Laboratories and Academic Dean, under which he is tasked with planning and implementing priorities and strategies for, respectively, research and education.

Professor Horwich completed his medical degree at the University of London in 1971 and began working in UK hospitals. He then spent a year at Harvard University in Boston as a Fellow in Oncology before beginning his research career in the UK in 1975. Professor Horwich studied for a PhD at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund.

After joining the ICR as a lecturer in 1981, Professor Horwich was appointed Professor of Radiotherapy in 1986. In 1994 he became the first Director of Clinical Research within the ICR and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, a position he held for more than 10 years.

His research career to date has lead to the publication of more than 380 papers and he is on the editorial board for six peer-reviewed journals.

Professor Horwich specialises in urological malignancies and lymphomas and holds an honorary consultant contract with The Royal Marsden.

In his leisure time, Professor Horwich enjoys playing tennis and golf.

Dr. Robert Huddart is a Reader* at the Institute of Cancer Research, leading a team in the Section of Radiotherapy that researches bladder and testicular cancer. He is one of the ICR’s top scientists in the Everyman laboratories and also an Honorary Consultant in Urological Oncology at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, where he manages and treats patients with urological cancer - cancer that affects the kidney, bladder, prostate, testicles and penis.

Dr. Huddart completed a Master of Arts at Oxford and a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery at the University of London before undertaking general medical training in Oxford and Cambridge. He gained membership to the Royal College of Physicians and then moved to The Royal Marsden for specialist training in oncology. Dr. Huddart was awarded gold medals in both stages of the examination to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Radiologists. He first joined the ICR to complete a PhD in the molecular biology of testicular cancer with Professor Colin Cooper.

“Working as a clinical academic at the ICR and The Royal Marsden provides an almost unique opportunity in the UK of working and researching at the cutting edge of oncology, meeting and working with some of the UK's top cancer scientists and being able to investigate and use new technologies and developments. This, combined with the excellence of cancer care within The Royal Marsden, means there is no better place, in my view, for an oncologist to be,” Dr. Huddart says.

Dr. Huddart’s current research focus is improving radiotherapy treatment for bladder cancer, examining the genetic causes of testicular cancer and developing new ways to treat it.

“Clinical oncology as a speciality was attractive to me as a blend of holistic patient care, complex treatment delivery and strong research,” Dr. Huddart says. “I got into urological cancer through the opportunity to undertake a PhD on testicular cancer. I was persuaded to stay in this research area by the varied and complex management of the different types of urological cancer, each of which has a unique identity and challenge, as well as the opportunity to advocate for services for male cancer.”

Dr. Huddart also chairs the National Cancer Research Institute testicular cancer group and jointly leads the ICR’s postgraduate course in oncology. Most recently, he has qualified for a postgraduate certificate in education from University College, London.

In the future, Dr. Huddart hopes to be involved in “developing new personalised treatments which make a real impact on the outlook of the patients we see each week”.

Dr. Huddart’s life away from work revolves around his wife and three children. He also competes regularly for a local badminton club in the Surrey leagues, despite joking he has “given up hope of improving”.

*A university teacher ranked between a senior lecturer and professor

Professor Stan Kaye is currently Head of the Drug Development Unit at The Institute of Cancer Research. He is also the Head of the Section of Medicine with our partner hospital, The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

Prof Kaye is head of the world’s largest Phase I Unit which is leading approximately 30 current new drug trials. Over 200 patients per year now enter Phase I trials in the Unit.

Professor Kaye joined the Institute of Cancer Research in September 2000 after 20 years in Glasgow, 15 of which were spent as Head of Medical Oncology at Glasgow University.

He qualified in medicine in 1972 in London, and completed training in medicine and oncology in London and Australia. His major specialities include drug development, drug resistance and ovarian cancer. 

The author of more than 350 peer reviewed papers, he sits on the Editorial Board of 12 cancer journals, and has held various national and international responsibilities.

Professor Kaye came to the ICR because ‘it is one of the best places in the world to do clinical new drug development’. He says his field of cancer research is ‘rewarding and exciting’, but wishes he had more time to see the world. In the small amount of spare time he has, Professor Kaye enjoys walking and squash.

Martin Leach is ICR Professor of Physics as Applied to Medicine, and Joint Section Chairman and Co-Director of the new Cancer Research UK and EPSRC Cancer Imaging Centre at The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

Professor Leach’s research focuses on advancing and defining the use of magnetic resonance (MR) in detecting cancer, diagnosing cancer, assessing cancer spread and evaluating patient response to treatment.

His current projects include assessing biological processes in tissue using MR, finding biological markers that can be used to evaluate new treatments, working out how to use MR to more accurately target radiotherapy to patients’ cancer cells while avoiding healthy tissue and improving methods to measure and analyze breast cancers.

Professor Leach was drawn to cancer imaging as a way to use his fascination with nuclear physics – sparked while a Physics student at the University of Surrey - for social benefit. This led to a Masters in Applied Radiation Physics and a PhD at Birmingham, where Professor Leach began developing methods of non-invasively measuring body composition using a range of nuclear accelerators.

In 1978, Professor Leach started at the physics department of the ICR and The Royal Marsden, a partnership which he still considers “the best in the country at applying research developments to cancer medicine”. Professor Leach initially joined to develop computerized tomography imaging devices (imaging slices through the body), helping to precisely map tumors in three dimensions. The aim of these maps was to assist doctors in planning radiotherapy treatment, so the cancer cells could be accurately located and targeted with radiation. He also worked on nuclear imaging techniques including the use of radioactive isotopes and positron emission topography (PET). When Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology became available, Professor Leach worked with the then Head of Radiology, Professor Dame Janet Husband, to plan a programme of research to examine the possible applications of MRI in cancer care.

“I was particularly drawn to this as it included challenging physics and the ability to image non-invasively, but also the potential to measure the metabolic and functional properties of tumors,” Professor Leach says. “Our facility was the first high field system in the country capable of both measuring metabolism and anatomy, and in 1990 we were established as the CRC Clinical Magnetic Resonance Research Group.”

Professor Leach says developing this new area of research and bringing it from the laboratory to the clinic has been one of his greatest achievements at the ICR, as it has major applications for patients. Other successful projects include demonstrating that MRI is a sensitive method of screening for breast cancer in women with genetic mutations giving a high risk of the disease, leading to new guidelines in the UK, USA and elsewhere, and also that MR can be used to non-invasively measure changes in the chemistry of cancer cells that can report on the action of new cancer treatments targeting cell function. Prof Leach has also developed methods to measure tumor vascular properties that now play an important role in evaluating new treatments.

Professor Leach is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, as well as of the Institute of Physics and the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. He is a Clinical Scientist and an NIHR Senior Investigator, serves on a number of editorial boards and was previously Editor of Physics in Medicine and Biology. He is principal investigator or co-applicant on grants in excess of £17million, including the new Cancer Imaging Centre, the Wellcome Trust-coordinated 3T Clinical Infrastructure Facility, and Research Council, EU and NCI (USA) funded awards.

In the future, Professor Leach says he hopes to improve methods of detecting and assessing cancer, and of planning and monitoring the effect of treatments.

“This will increasingly come from combining different types of information about function and metabolism with anatomical information,” he says. “We will also be combining different imaging techniques from the range of imaging equipment available in our new Cancer Imaging Centre to find the best way to characterize disease, guide tissue sampling and treatment, and assess novel treatments.”

Outside work, Professor Leach enjoys living in Sussex with his wife Jan, and daughters when at home, gardening, walking, music and history.

Dr. Chris Parker is a clinical oncologist at The Institute of Cancer Research. His research work focuses on finding better ways of predicting the aggressiveness of patients’ prostate cancer in order to decide the appropriate treatment.

He has several clinical trials underway, including working out whether regularly examining patients showing early signs of the cancer but without disease symptoms - known as active surveillance - is a better option than subjecting patients to treatments with adverse side effects. He is also testing whether giving radiotherapy treatment after surgery improves patient outcomes, and new treatments for advanced disease.

After gaining a first class degree in Medical Sciences from Cambridge, Dr. Parker obtained his professional medical qualifications at Oxford. He has previously worked at St George’s Hospital in London and Princess Margaret Hospital in Canada, among others, and volunteered in Rwanda. He started at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust in 1993 and is currently a Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant in Clinical Oncology and Prostate Cancer Translational Research. He has been a member of several high-level advisory and scientific organisations, including the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) Guideline Development Group between 2005 and 2008, and sits on editorial boards for several peer-reviewed journals.

At the ICR, which he first joined in 1996, Dr. Parker works within the Section of Academic Radiotherapy. Pleased to be part of the team at the ICR, he says "the best research relies on teamwork, and there’s no better prostate cancer research team in the country".

Improving the lot of men with prostate cancer is the driving force behind Dr. Parker’s work. "Prostate cancer is unique. It’s the only common solid cancer that is so variable in its behavior. On the one hand it can be a lethal disease killing one man every hour in the UK, and yet at the same time it can lie dormant for decades without causing any harm at all."

His dedication to unravelling the causes of the disease is in evidence when Dr. Parker is asked about his hobbies: "None. I work too hard!"

Professor Andrew Pearson is leading a program at The Institute of Cancer Research that develops drugs to benefit children and young people. He works on all stages of the process to get the drugs to patients, from identifying potential research targets, drug discovery and initial clinical trials.

Professor Pearson’s particular interest is neuroblastoma, one of the most common childhood cancers. Sufferers often have a poor prognosis as the majority of neuroblastomas have already spread before the cancer is diagnosed, relapse is common and current treatments can create long-term health problems. Professor Pearson is working to improve treatments.

He qualified in medicine in 1977, trained as a pediatrician and oncologist and then spent a year at the University of Minnesota in the United States.

Professor Pearson joined the ICR in 2005 after 30 years at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. When he left the university he was Professor of Paediatric Oncology and Head of the Children's and Young People's Unit as well as Dean of Postgraduate studies. He came to the ICR because of its “unparalleled potential for developing new drugs for children with cancer, in order that their chance of long-term cure is improved”.

He presently holds the post of Chairman of the ICR’s Paediatric Oncology Section and is also head of the Children’s and Young People’s Unit with ICR’s partner hospital The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. Professor Pearson has been Chair of the United Kingdom Children’s Cancer Study Group, and was the first Chair of the group’s Neuroblastoma Committee. He founded and was twice Chair of the International Society of Paediatric Oncology Europe Neuroblastoma Group and also founded and held co-Chair position at the International Neuroblastoma Risk Group Taskforce. He has authored more than 270 peer-reviewed manuscripts.

Outside research, he greatly enjoys time with his family and walking.

David Phillips is Professor of Environmental Carcinogenesis at The Institute of Cancer Research. His research interests are focused on mechanistic investigations into environmental causes of cancer and gene-environment interactions, and monitoring human exposure to carcinogens.

He is currently chair of the Committee on Carcinogenicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (COC) and a member of its sister Committee on Mutagenicity (COM). He is also a member of the Food Standards Agency General Advisory Committee on Science (GACS).

He is Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal Mutagenesis, and he has chaired working groups evaluating carcinogenic risks to humans for the US National Toxicology Program (NTP), and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

After obtaining his first degree in Chemistry at the University of Oxford, Professor Phillips gained his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of London before going on to postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University, USA.

Professor Phillips says the ICR provides him with an ideal environment in which to carry out research. "Cancer research is by its very nature interdisciplinary, and the ICR allows me to interact with colleagues with different expertise."

A combination of chance and curiosity led him to specialise in his chosen field. "I was fortunate in finding a PhD research project in the interesting (to me) field of how carcinogenic chemicals exert their effects," he says. "There are still enough unanswered questions in this general area to get me out of bed in the morning."

"The ultimate solution to the cancer problem is the prevention of the disease occurring in the first place. There are many things that we do not yet understand about the causes of cancer, why it affects some people and not others, and how to avoid some of its many forms. I still aspire to find answers to some of the many questions that still remain about what causes cancer, and how."

He lists carpentry, ornithology, photography, blues music, running, cycling and "generally trying to defy the ageing process" as hobbies.

Professor Caroline Springer leads the Gene and Oncogene Targeting team within the Cancer Therapeutics Section at The Institute of Cancer Research. Her work focuses on drug development.

She is currently investigating several potential drugs, including antibody directed enzyme prodrug therapy, gene directed enzyme producing therapy and new therapies for malignant melanoma. Other tumor types she examines include hepatoma, colorectal carcinoma and head and neck cancer. Professor Springer’s research also involves developing different drug classes that stop tumor cells being in a state of continued growth. 

Professor Springer was first touched by cancer as a seven-year-old when her grandmother died of colorectal cancer. She now feels lucky to have a job that is both interesting a rewarding.

"It’s great to be in a position to try to make a real difference. Our aim is to develop novel therapies that can benefit people. It is something worth pursuing day and night."

After completing a PhD in biological chemistry and an MRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at Imperial College School of Medicine, Professor Springer was awarded a Cancer Research UK grant to develop ADEPT (antibody-directed enzyme prodrug therapy) as a therapy for colorectal carcinoma treatment at the ICR.

In her spare time Professor Springer likes to visit galleries and museums and to bake and ice novelty cakes.

Professor Anthony Swerdlow’s work focuses on investigating the causes of cancer in people, along with the long-term effects of cancer treatments. He is the Head of the Epidemiology Section and Director of the Cancer Screening Evaluation Unit at The Institute of Cancer Research. He is also an Honorary Consultant in Epidemiology at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

His current research projects include jointly leading a large and comprehensive study into the causes of breast cancer, involving more than 100,000 British women. He is also examining the long-term risks of cancer and heart disease in Hodgkin’s lymphoma patients, investigating the causes of brain tumours, leukemia and male breast cancer, and researching breast and other cancer screening programmes in the UK.

“I am constantly fascinated by the varying problems and solutions of epidemiological research. This field of cancer research brings together medicine, statistical analysis and assessment of the effects of people’s behaviors and environments, which is both intriguing and, I hope, worthwhile,” Professor Swerdlow says.

Professor Swerdlow trained in medicine at Cambridge and Oxford Universities and held junior posts in clinical medicine before beginning his career in epidemiology. He worked at the University of Glasgow’s Department of Community Medicine and the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys before moving in 1987 to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Professor Swerdlow joined the ICR in 2000, and says it provides an excellent intellectual and physical environment for epidemiological research.

“The ICR is focussed on undertaking first class research, and the facilities and atmosphere are very much directed to facilitating it. It is a great place to work,” he says.

Professor Swerdlow has been elected a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, the Institute of Biology and the Academy of Medical Sciences, and was a member of the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones.

It is Professor Swerdlow’s ambition to contribute toward determining the causes of cancer and therefore preventing its occurrence. His hobbies are travelling with his wife, especially to France, running, and gardening.

Paul Workman is Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at The Institute of Cancer Research, heading the Cancer Research UK Centre for Cancer Therapeutics.

Professor Workman is currently working on drugs with the ability to block molecules that cancer cells require for growth, in particular molecular chaperones and the PI 3-kinase pathway. He has been involved in designing a number of new drugs that have entered clinical trials, including one that has already received FDA approval.

 “I find it extraordinarily satisfying to be involved in designing small molecule drugs that are able to correct or exploit a specific cancer-causing abnormality,” he says. “I am excited about the therapeutic potential of these drugs as well as proud of the science behind them.”

Professor Workman began working at the ICR in 1997 after four years in cancer drug development at pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. Earlier, he completed a PhD in cancer pharmacology and drug development at Leeds University and became a post-doctoral researcher and then staff scientist at the Medical Research Council Oncology Unit in Cambridge.

He joined the ICR because he was “excited by the opportunity to build a major academic drug discovery group focusing on new molecular targets and exploiting our growing knowledge of the cancer genome”. 

“I love the passion for cancer research and high level of scientific expertise at the ICR. The close interaction with The Royal Marsden NHS Trust is also very important for translating our research into clinical benefit.  It’s a unique environment for cancer drug discovery and it’s a really exciting time to be doing this.”

Professor Workman believes the ICR has enormous potential to develop new drugs in the future that will contribute to patients receiving personalized medical treatment for cancer.

When he is not working, Professor Workman enjoys music, including opera, and maintains his fitness by going to the gym. He also likes living in the country but being close to London’s attractions.