Cancer Research UK has announced that the Cancer Research UK City of London Centre is set to receive a £10.5 million-pound cash injection to train more doctors as clinician scientists, so they can develop careers undertaking cancer research alongside their clinical practice. Read the full article here.

Eric So, Professor and Chair in Leukaemia Biology in the Comprehensive Cancer Centre, and his lab identified two molecules that control when bone marrow stem cells rest and recover, and when they spring into action and replicate. The researchers subsequently discovered an enzyme that mediates the functions of these molecules. Since bone marrow stem cell transplantation has been the key treatment for a large array of blood cancers, their findings open the door to a new pathway for their future therapeutics. Read here.

Researchers from KCL and others have shown for the first time that a crucial interface in a protein that drives cancer growth could act as a target for more effective treatments. Read here.

With number of cancer diagnoses  set to rise 50 per cent by 2040, more funding for cancer research is essential. Read here.

Kevin Litchfield and Mariam Jamal-Hanjani are among the group of scientists who will use the CRUK Biology to Prevention Award, joint with the CRIS Cancer Foundation, to develop LungVax, the world’s first vaccine to prevent lung cancer in high-risk populations by targeting hotspot neoantigens via the ChAdOx platform. Read more.

Five new teams – KOODAC, MATCHMAKERS, PROSPECT, PROTECT, and SAMBAI will receive up to $25m over five years from the Cancer Grand Challenge, to tackle some of cancer’s toughest challenges. Read more.

Research Supervisor of the Year Award: Dr Oliver Pearce (Senior Lecturer),  Vice Principal’s Award for Excellence in Research: Dr Louise Barber (Senior Scientific Officer), Emerging Professional Services Leader Award: Dr Bex Gresham (Principal Laboratory Manager), Innovation and Enterprise Award: Professor Pedro R. Cutillas (Professor of Cell Signalling and Proteomics),  Impact Award: Professor Thomas Powles,MD (Professor of Genitourinary Oncology),  Impact Award: Professor Peter Szlosarek , Outstanding Early-Career Researcher: Dr Mirjana Efremova

Dr Nicholas McGranahan, City of London Centre Theme 3 Co-Lead, has been named the Life Sciences Laureate at the 2024 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the UK. Read more here.

Read the highlights from the 2024 symposium here and save the date for the 2025 Centre Symposium 27-28 January 2025 in person at the Crick.

Pegargiminase Plus, a drug to treat mesothelioma, a  hard-to-treat cancer linked to asbestos, has been developed by a group of scientists led by Peter Szlosarek, from Barts Cancer Institute and City of London faculty member. Read more here.

Lucia was recognised by the Bone Cancer Research Trust for spearheading research that is important to patients and for always maintaining a patient-first mindset. Read more here

Innersight Labs, a cutting-edge AI-powered medical software company spun-out from the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences at King’s College London, has been acquired by leading international MedTech company KARL STORZ.

The CRUK City of London Centre held the first two-day Cancer Evolution Symposium on Monday 13^th – Tuesday 14^th September 2021. This international hybrid event hosted at the Francis Crick Institute saw 30 speakers from across the globe presenting to in person attendees and nearly 600 virtual attendees.

This event showcased the breadth and depth of cancer evolution research happening across the Centre and beyond. Professor Charles Swanton began the event  with an overview of the research being conducted at the CoL Centre in this field, followed by talks from international leaders and early career researchers. The event brought together researchers in person, some for the first time in over a year, to initiate new collaborations and broaden fields of research in cancer evolution.

CRUK City of London Centre Clinical Research Training Fellow Michael Austin talks about their move from a clinical to research environment to take on a PhD within the City of London Centre.

Eva Bugallo Blanco talks about their experience as a CRUK City of London Centre PhD student based at Guy´s Hospital (King´s College London, KCL) and Barts Cancer Institute (BCI).

RadNet City of London spans across 4 leading central London institutes, namely UCL, King’s, Barts and the Crick, and unites multi-disciplinary expertise across London to cultivate a modernised radiation research landscape. Our research focus is predicated on the view that cancer cure by radiotherapy can be improved by concentrating on the following themes:

• Radiation Resistance Including cancer evolution and cancer stem cells
• Radiation Combinations How the TME and immune system affect response to radiotherapy
• Targeting and Technology Advanced radiotherapy techniques, including PBT, that converge on the tumour for children and young people’s cancers
• Outcomes and risk predictions Personalising radiotherapy using artificial intelligence, computational models and improved tumour imaging.
• Clinical translation Establish a clinical trials platform, to ensure a strong forward and reverse translational element to the above themes

Group Leaders

We are seeking top scientists with a major focus in radiation biology and radiation oncology who would be interested to join our team. We have a group leader position available and wish to explore how their ambitions align with our strategy.

Clinical Academics in Radiotherapy

We are seeking staff from our NHS Trust partners, who have a major focus in radiation biology and/or radiation oncology research. We have clinical PAs available and wish to explore how their ambitions align with our strategy.

For expressions of interest, please contact the RadNet City of London Project Manager, Michelle Craft, on cruk-radnet-cityoflondon@ucl.ac.uk.

Website: https://crukradnet.colcc.ac.uk/
Follow us on twitter @RadNetCRUKCoL

Congratulations to Vinaya Srirangam Nadhamuni, a CoL Centre Clinical Research Fellow at Barts Cancer Institute (BCI), Queen Mary University of London, who has progressed to the national final of the 2020 Vitae Three Minute Thesis® (3MT®) competition. As one of six finalists, Vinaya will be delivering a presentation about her research project live and online on Wednesday 16th September. 3MT® is an academic competition developed by the University of Queensland, Australia, that challenges PhD students to deliver a compelling spoken presentation on their research topic and its significance in just 3 minutes. Vinaya’s presentation is entitled ‘The war on cancer: understanding the immune system’s strategies for fighting bowel cancer.’

As a histopathology trainee, Vinaya had completed 18 months of training in histopathology before pursuing a PhD as part of the Cancer Research UK City of London Centre Clinical Research Training Fellowship Programme. Vinaya is undertaking her research project in Professor Trevor Graham’s laboratory group in BCI’s Centre for Cancer Genomics and Computational Biology.

Ahead of the final, Bethan Warman, Communications Manager at the BCI, spoke to Vinaya to find out more about her research and her experience in the competition.

What prompted you to enter the Vitae 3MT® competition? How have you found the experience so far?

I am often asked by my friends and family about the project I’m working on. My main aim in entering the competition was to come up with a short description that would explain this clearly (and maybe even wow them!). However, I have gained much more from this experience than I could have expected. Having to stop and think about the relevance of my work and how it fits into the bigger picture has been really useful, especially in terms of keeping me motivated to work even harder on my project.

Can you tell us a bit about your research project?

My project aims to understand how bowel cancer interacts with and escapes from the immune system. I am studying this by staining the different cell types in bowel cancer tissue with markers of different colours simultaneously and reviewing the stained tissue under the microscope. This will allow me to characterise the different immune cell types present- not only their quantity but also crucially their spatial interactions with each other and cancer cells.

This approach will help us identify mechanisms used by cancer cells to “escape” from the immune system. In turn, these insights will hopefully guide the development of treatments targeting these escape mechanisms. Eventually, this approach can be translated to a clinical setting such that we can determine the escape mechanisms present in a particular patient’s cancer and provide targeted treatment, ultimately decreasing the significant mortality associated with bowel cancer.

From a histopathology point of view, a great deal of the clinical work in a pathology department involves looking at tissue under the microscope and using this information to diagnose cancer and identify risk factors which predict a worse prognosis. My project gives me the opportunity to take this process one step further by grouping the cells I see under the microscope into subtypes and understanding how they interact. I hope that this will deepen our understanding of the biological processes underlying the image that we see under the microscope.

How do you feel to have made it through to the 3MT® competition national final?

I am thrilled to have made it this far, especially considering 53 universities participated this year and only six finalists could be selected from the pool of candidates! I couldn’t have done it without the support of my fantastic lab. From helping me with my project at every turn to turning up to support me at the Queen Mary final, they have been absolutely amazing! I couldn’t ask for a more supportive team and am very grateful to have this opportunity to work with them during my PhD.

We wish Vinaya the best of luck in the final on 16th September. If you would like to watch the final and show your support, you can register online.

Cancer Research UK has recently launched the Open Lab Initiative, a new collaborative research venture, across its network of Centres. The aim of the Open Lab Initiative is to connect CRUK Centre Network research groups with mutual or complementary interests and expertise, from across the UK, to spark creative discussions, generate novel scientific ideas, and establish new research collaborations during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and beyond.

The Open Lab Initiative removes all the fuss and hassle from finding new research collaborators – proprietary matching algorithms and Open Register make meeting your ideal research partner a breeze!

If you are interested in joining, simply sign up to join the Initiative using the online webform and within 5 working days the team will match you to another research group to hold a joint virtual group meeting or journal club. Alternatively you can add your research group to the Open Register to allow others to match with you directly.

For more information and to sign up, please see: www.crukcc.org/openlab

Congratulations to our first year PhD Clinical Research Training Fellow, Vinaya Srirangam Nadhamuni, who has won QMUL’s 3 minute thesis competition. Vinaya was one of 5 QMUL students shortlisted for the final and was not only the winner of the overall competition but also took the People’s Choice award. The finals took place over zoom, with over 70 people logging in to listen to the talks. She will now go on to represent QMUL in the national semi-finals.

UK National Cancer Imaging Translational Accelerator (NCITA) establishes infrastructure for validation and adoption of cancer imaging biomarkers as decision-making tools in clinical trials and NHS practice.

Researchers and medical experts from nine world-leading medical imaging centres across the UK come together to form an integrated infrastructure for standardising and validating cancer imaging biomarkers for clinical use.

The centres include University College London, University of Manchester, University of Oxford, King’s College London, The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Imperial College London, Cambridge University, Newcastle University and University of Glasgow. This unique UK infrastructure provides clinical researchers across the UK with open access to world-class clinical imaging facilities and expertise, as well a repository data management service, artificial intelligence (AI) tools and ongoing training opportunities.

The NCITA consortium, through engagement with NHS Trusts, pharmaceutical companies, medical imaging and nuclear medicine companies as well as funding bodies and patient groups, aims to develop a robust and sustainable imaging biomarker certification process, to revolutionise the speed and accuracy of cancer diagnosis, tumour classification and patient response to treatment.

Professor Shonit Punwani, Chair of the NCITA governance group said, “The UK is at the forefront of imaging research, with new techniques and technologies often making the news. Yet, the pace of change in clinical practice remains painfully slow. To date we have been missing the infrastructure to deliver these new technologies to the clinic. NCITA fills this gap by defining a translational pipeline with the singular aim of making our discoveries fit for clinical application. This can only be done with a creative and collaborative approach across academia, industry and the NHS.”

The NCITA initiative is funded by Cancer Research UK and will receive up to £10 million over 5 years. The NCITA network is led by Prof Shonit Punwani, Prof James O’Connor, Prof Eric Aboagye, Prof Geoff Higgins, Prof Evis Sala, Prof Dow Mu Koh, Prof Tony Ng, Prof Hing Leung and Prof Ruth Plummer with up to 49 co-investigators supporting the NCITA initiative. NCITA is keen to expand and bring in new academic and industrial partnerships as it develops.

To stay up-to-date with NCITA news, follow us on Twitter and see our website http://ncita.org.uk

MRI imaging of patient with biopsy proven prostate cancer.
The left image is an axial T2-weighted MRI image showing a homogenous low signal area in the left anterior para-midline transition zone of the prostate. The right image is a novel VERDICT (Vascular, Extracellular and Restricted Diffusion for Cytometry in Tumours) MRI map at the same level showing a focal area (arrow) with increased intracellular volume fraction, which enables clearer definition of the tumour area.

Image credit: Images from the INNOVATE trial (https://bmccancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12885-016-2856-2), courtesy of Professor Shonit Punwani and Dr Saurabh Singh, University College London, Centre for Medical Imaging

The second Crick International Cancer Conference will take place on 15-17^th September 2019. A host of world-leading scientists and clinicians will present their latest work covering links between genomic integrity and cancer, building new cancer models, and improving therapies. The conference will also provide extensive opportunities for early career researchers to present both talks and posters alongside a world class line up of speakers. Abstracts are actively encouraged and there will be a prize for the best selected talk and best poster. A networking reception will further enable the attendees to make new links across disciplines, stimulating fresh ideas about the biology that underpins cancer development, and new ways to tackle the disease.

For booking and more information visit the website.

On the 3^rd September 2019  the CRUK City of London Centre is launching its computational and data resource.  This resource will be a key element in the cancer evolution theme and will enable cancer’s dynamics to be mapped longitudinally during exposure to biological therapies, integrated within the partners’ NHS service. The launch will kick off with a  short presentation explaining what the resource offers and how to access it. Following the presentation, attendees can participate in a Data Challenge; We are encouraging early-career researchers (e.g. PhD students and post-docs) across the partners to form groups and embark on a collaborative effort within the cancer evolution theme to make use of the exciting computer resources available. The launch will be open to CoL Centre Faculty and their lab members only. If you would like more information on the event or to register, please email us.

The first cohort of PhD students and Clinical Research Training Fellows have been appointed to start the CoL Centre Training Programme in September 2019. Two excellent candidates were selected from over 240 applications and will start their PhD in labs based at the Crick and King’s College London. Eight Clinical Research Training Fellows have also been appointed across the Centre. All 2019 CoL trainees will attend an induction week in September and will participate in the next CoL symposium in February.  More information on the trainees and their projects will be available on the website in the next few months.

The CRUK City of London Centre is now on twitter! Follow us @CRUKCOLcentre to get all the news and events on the Centre, and to find out more about the latest cancer biotherapeutics breakthroughs.