Surgery & Cancer

Theme Overview

This theme aims to improve cancer outcomes by diagnosing cancers earlier and improving treatments once a diagnosis is made.

Why this Research is Needed

Over 350,000 people are diagnosed with cancer annually in the UK, almost half with incurable, late-stage disease. Cancer is one of the UK’s leading causes of death and our cancer survival rates remain lower than many European countries. Our theme will improve cancer outcomes through patient-focused research, with an emphasis on the most common cancers in north west London: breast, urological (especially prostate and bladder), gastrointestinal (including liver and pancreas), haematological and gynaecological.

Theme Aims

Our specific aims are to:

1. Improve patient pathways through studies that will allow early diagnosis of cancer, including studies of digital tools, including artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.
2. Introduce novel technologies and treatments that expand our longstanding convergence-science approach to enhance precision-medicine in cancer.

Detailed objectives can be downloaded here

Upcoming /Ongoing Projects within the Theme

Early diagnosis: Our innovative use of information collected on high street retailers’ loyalty cards is reducing delays in ovarian cancer diagnosis by identifying changes in purchasing behaviour in the months prior to diagnosis. We will work with a wide range of high street retailers and utilise our links with Google Health/Deep Mind as well as Imperial’s AI/machine-learning expertise to develop pipelines that generate early warnings for cardholders to seek medical advice.

Precision management: We will leverage the pioneering ATLANTA trial to improve therapy for advanced prostate cancer, comparing novel localised treatments (focused high-energy ultrasound, robotic surgery, stereotactic ablative radiotherapy) with current standards of care.

Evolution and adaptation: Our application of circulating biomarkers, including personalised circulating tumour (ct) DNA sequencing, allows early detection of therapy resistance in breast and ovarian cancers. We will develop clinical trials to evaluate therapy change using ctDNA analysis in ovarian, breast and colorectal cancers.

Patient and Public Involvement, Engagement and Participation

Patients treated at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust are ethnically diverse, and up to 40% do not speak English as their first language. We seek to ensure that our research reflects this diversity by engaging with specific groups within our communities. We instigated a survey to capture the primary concerns of our population and have established a Patient and Public Involvement, Engagement and Participation (PPIEP) panel. We have representatives on our theme management group to appraise our overall research approach and we have specific PPIEP involvement in each project. We will hold regular talks and events to build relationships between our researchers and the community.