Pan-London fellowships to improve cancer care

06 Aug 2019

Six researchers have been awarded pan-London cancer research fellowships to improve cancer care and experience. The fellowships for 2019/20 are focusing on improving early diagnosis, living with and beyond cancer and analysis of big data. This year’s fellows include a medical oncologist, a paediatric oncologist, a GP, a dietitian, a clinical nurse specialist and, for the first time, a pharmacist.

Dr Gillian Rosenberg, RM Partners Research and Development Manager, said: ‘This is the fourth year of the fellowship programme and the committee was extremely impressed with the wide range and good quality of the proposals. We are confident these pre-doctoral fellowships will generate new, collaborative cancer research in areas of unmet clinical need.’

The successful fellows and project titles are:

Early Diagnosis

• Benjamin Hunter, Radiomics and AI stratification of incidental lung nodules

Living With and Beyond Cancer

• Paula Adkin, The prevalence and impact of gastrointestinal, urinary and sexual dysfunction following abdomino-pelvic radiotherapy for childhood, teenage and young adult cancers
• Jennifer McCracken, What factors should be considered when making a shared decision with patient and carers to commence and discontinue artificial nutrition at end of life?
• James Tallant, Developing personalised, low-burden quality of life assessments for patients living with brain tumours

Analysis of Big Data

• Meena Rafiq, Enhancing symptom-based assessment of cancer risk with prescription and investigation history data: Unlocking evidence from electronic health records to develop novel algorithms and clinical decision rules
• Man-Chie Chow, Understanding the incidence of anxiety and depression following cancer treatment using The Health Improvement Network (THIN) data

The 12 month programme of London-based research fellowships is a partnership between the three Cancer Alliances across London – RM Partners West London Cancer Alliance, North Central and East London Cancer Alliance and South East London Cancer Alliance – and the Biomedical Research Centres at Imperial College and The Royal Marsden/Institute of Cancer Research.

For more information please contact Dr Michelle Chen, Research and Development Manager, rmpartners.research@nhs.net