Speakers and Chairs at UKIOG Meeting January 2023

Prof Tom Crosby

Tom is a Consultant Oncologist in Velindre Cancer Centre, specialising in Upper GI cancer since 2008. As clinical lead for the Wales Cancer Network Tom has lead the development of the Cancer Delivery Plans 2016-20 and 22-25 and the Single Cancer Pathway which looks to transform patient pathways from referral, through diagnosis to treatment.

He is also helping to lead the development of a new Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff due to open 2025.

Tom is a leader in Upper GI Oesophageal Chemo-radiotherapy Research, Service and Development in the UK. He is Chief Investigator to the series of UK Multi-centre SCOPE trials (SCOPE1, NeoSCOPE and SCOPE2) and was the recent Chair of the NCRI OG Cancer Subgroup and Oncology Lead for the UK National Oesophago-Gastric Cancer Audit.

Tom has recently been recognised for his service to cancer services in Wales and the UK with the award of an honorary Professorship by Cardiff University and an OBE in the New Year’s Honours list in 2019 and is now the National Clinical Director of Cancer for Wales.

Tom has been one of the National clinical leads that has led to the establishment of the UK and Ireland Oesophago-gastric Group (UKIOG).

Dr Idris Baker

Idris Baker is a Consultant in Palliative Medicine in Swansea and holds honorary teaching appointments in Swansea, Cardiff and Amsterdam Universities.

Alongside his clinical role he is Wales’s National Clinical Lead for Palliative & End of Life care, helping developing a new value-based national clinical programme.

Dr Elizabeth (Lizzy) Smyth

Elizabeth (Lizzy) Smyth is an consultant in gastrointestinal oncology at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. Dr Smyth commenced her oncology training in Dublin, Ireland. In 2009 she was awarded an Irish Society of Medical Oncology fellowship to train at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Centre, New York. Following this she worked at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London from 2011-2018.

Dr Sarah Gwynne

Sarah Gwynne is a consultant clinical oncologist at the South West Wales Cancer Centre. Her research interests are in improving outcomes for patients with OG cancer. She is QA lead and TMG member for a number of UK radiotherapy trials in oesophageal cancer and is the co-lead for the gastric arm of the PICCOS trial.

Mr Sheraz Markar

Qualified from Cambridge University in 2007, and currently Deputy Director Surgical Interventional Trials Unit, Nuffield Department of Surgery, University of Oxford & UGIRA Robotic Fellow UMC Utrecht, Netherlands. Undertaken two PhDs concerning the diagnosis and management of oesophageal and gastric cancer, with over 270 peer-reviewed publications. Primary research interests are concerning survivorship and surveillance following oesophageal and gastric cancer treatment, and standardisation of surgical quality assessment in upper gastrointestinal surgery.

Dr Massimiliano di Pietro

Massimiliano di Pietro is Senior Clinical Investigator Scientist and Consultant Gastroenterologist at Cambridge University Hospitals. His clinical expertise includes reflux disease and diagnosis/treatment of early gastric and oesophageal cancer. His research focuses on Barrett’s oesophagus with particular interest in biomarkers for risk stratification, imaging tools for dysplasia detection and quality standards in endoscopy.

Mr Dave Chuter

David is an Oesophageal Cancer survivor, treatment was surgery in 2006.

As a Patient Advocate David has been involved with supporting OG cancer patients by running support groups and being their voice in research.

Previously the Chair of the OPA (2017 - 2020) and currently is the Vice Chair of the Board and Chair of the Patient Advisory Group for Digestive Cancers Europe, David is also a PPI member of the NHS Leadership Academy and the NIHR Academy.

Ms Jo Harvey

Currently, I am Macmillan trust lead cancer nurse of Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals (SWB). Prior to this I was an advanced practitioner in Upper GI and Hepatobiliary cancers, qualifying with MSc advanced clinical practice. I have a wealth of knowledge and experience expanding over two decades in UGI/HPB cancers.

Mr Philip Pucher

Philip Pucher is oesophago-gastric and general surgeon at Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust. He holds honorary academic positions at Imperial College London and Portsmouth University with active research interests which include education, technology, and clinical outcome improvement with a focus on oesophago-gastric cancer. Canadian, he qualified in Vienna, Austria, before completing postgraduate training in the UK.

Dr Mary Booth

Mary Booth is a medical oncology specialist trainee registrar and Wellcome Trust 4Ward North Clinical PhD Fellow. Based at the University of Leeds, her research focus is the gastric cancer microbiome and she is presently undertaking 6 months of her PhD study at the University of Guelph, Canada.

Dr Chris Jones

Chris Jones is a Clinical Lecturer and Specialty Registrar in Clinical Oncology based in Cambridge, where he works within Rebecca Fitzgerald’s laboratory. Chris’ focus is on enhancing the radiation-based treatment of oesophageal cancers, including through developing targeted radiation sensitisers.

Ms Julie Thompson

Manages Guts UK information service provision. Responds to information enquiries at Guts UK and develops clear, engaging and evidence-based health information for the public and people affected by digestive health conditions. She is a qualified gastroenterology dietitian by background with 13 years’ experience in both medical and surgical gastroenterology.

Dr Rajarshi (Raj) Roy

Consultant Clinical Oncologist at Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust for the past 15 years with specialism in GI cancers and Cancer of Unknown Primary. Honorary Senior Lecturer at Hull York Medical School. PhD supervisor for Doctoral graduates in University of Hull. Upper GI sub-speciality Research lead for Yorkshire and Humber Clinical Alliance. Research interest is in combining novel molecules with Radiotherapy. Principal Investigator in several major GI clinical Trials.

Prof Was Mansoor

Professor Was Mansoor is a Consultant Medical Oncologist at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester. He leads the upper GI department at the Christie as well as being the chair for systemic therapy research. From a Network perspective, he is also the Greater Manchester UGI research lead. Until recently he was the Clinical Director of Medical Oncology.

Professor Mansoor moved to Manchester in 1998 to do his PhD looking at the relationship between upper GI cancers and the immune system and attained a PhD exploring genetically modified ‘next generation’ chimeric T cells directed against upper GI cancers. As a consultant, he continued his UGI service and immune related research and became the upper GI lead. In particular, his research is now exploring the difference in T cell receptor repertoire and tumour immune related microenvironment within immune responsive versus immune resistant patients. Along with this research, he became interested in nutritional matters relating to these cancers. He now also leads a group of researchers looking at aspects regarding anorexia, cachexia and sarcopenia. In particular, he is interested in outcomes relating to these conditions and their possible immune mechanism. He also developed an interest in lung neuroendocrine tumours and other rare cancers. He has built up one of the largest lung NET practices in the UK and is well published in many aspects of this rare group of cancers.

Professor Mansoor was previously been the North West Training Programme Director for Medical Oncology and he is a member of many national and international committees.

Mr Christopher Peters

Christopher Peters went to medical school in Leeds and after completing basic surgical training moved to Cambridge to carry out a PhD with Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald. During his PhD he developed a four gene signature to predict outcome in oesophageal adenocarcinoma and jointly set up the OCCAMS collaboration which went on to be selected to run the International Cancer Genome Consortium's Whole Genome sequencing project in oesophageal adenocarcinoma.

After moving to London to complete his higher surgical training he was appointed as a Clinical Senior Lecturer and Consultant Upper GI surgeon at Imperial College London with a specialist interest in Biomarkers and understanding how new technologies are adopted into health care systems. He is the joint lead for Gastric Cancer for the NIHR funded PICCOS trial of Pressurised Intraperitoneal Aerosolised Chemotherapy.

Sir Harpal Kumar

Sir Harpal is the President, BioPharma Business and Europe for GRAIL. Prior to
GRAIL, he was Senior Vice President and Head of Innovation EMEA at Johnson &
Johnson. Before joining J&J, Sir Harpal spent more than 15 years with Cancer
Research UK and served as the organisation’s Chief Executive Officer from April
2007 until June 2018. Prior to this, he was Chief Operating Officer & Executive
Director of Development at CRUK and served as Chief Executive of Cancer
Research Technology (a subsidiary of CRUK). Before CRUK, he worked with
McKinsey & Co, and was CEO of The Papworth Trust and Nexan Group.
Sir Harpal received a first-class Masters in Chemical Engineering from the University
of Cambridge, and an MBA as a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School. He
has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Manchester,
Newcastle, Glasgow, and the Institute of Cancer Research, and he is an Honorary
Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Royal College of Radiologists,
Association of Cancer Physicians (UK) and St John’s College, University of
Cambridge. In 2016, he was knighted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for services
to cancer research.
He is a Board Member of Our Future Health and Chair of Our Future Health Trading
Ltd. He chairs the British Friends of Harvard Business School and the Global
Advisory Group for the Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital and is a member of
the President's Advisory Council for the European Association of Cancer Research.
He is a member of the Oversight Committee of the Covid-19 National Core Studies.

Dr Ganesh Vigneswaran

I am an NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Interventional Radiology at the University of Southampton. I focus on improving patient care by utilising Machine Learning/AI with multimodal datasets to develop decision support tools. I have explored such approaches within oncological decision-making and procedural outcome prediction in interventional therapies.

Prof Russell Petty

Professor Russell Petty is Chair of Medical Oncology at the University of Dundee and a Consultant Medical Oncologist at Tayside Cancer Centre in Ninewells Hospital and Medical School. He is Director of Research and Development for NHS Tayside and Director of Tayside Medical Science Centre. He leads a research programme in clinical and translational cancer medicine focused upon oesophageal and gastric cancer involving both laboratory research, as well as early and late phase clinical trials. He has been involved in the successful delivery of more than 150 cancer clinical trials and experimental cancer studies. Developing precision medicine strategies to tackle treatment resistant oesophageal and gastric cancers is a key research aim. He has over 150 peer reviewed publications including in high impact journals such as the Lancet, Lancet Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology, and Nature Genetics. His government and professional advisory roles include to the Chief Medical Officer in Scotland, Scottish Parliament, Chief Scientist in Scotland(CSO), Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) , National institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) ,National Cancer Research Institute(NCRI), European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) , and International Gastric Cancer Association(IGCA).

Prof Maeve Lowery

Maeve Lowery is an academic clinician who provides care to patients with oesophageal, gastric, pancreatic and liver cancer at St James Hospital, Dublin. She is Professor of Translational Cancer Medicine at Trinity College Dublin, where she leads a translational and clinical cancer research program in gastrointestinal cancers. She is Academic Director of the OECI-accredited Trinity St James Cancer Institute and principal investigator of the Trinity Academic Cancer Trials Group.

Her research focuses on understanding the genetic and molecular causes of cancer, establishing patient derived cancer models and applying this knowledge to oncology drug development. Her work is funded by the Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund, Science Foundation Ireland, the Health Research Board & Enterprise Ireland.

Dr Richard Turkington

Dr Richard Turkington is a Reader in Medical Oncology at the Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research, Queen’s University Belfast and an Honorary Consultant at the Northern Ireland Cancer Centre with an interest in oesophago-gastric cancer. Having graduated in medicine from Queen’s University Belfast he completed specialty training in Medical Oncology and was awarded a Cancer Research UK Bobby Moore Clinical Research Fellowship to pursue a PhD in novel drug target discovery in colo-rectal cancer under the supervision of Professor Patrick Johnston. He was appointed as an Academic Clinical Lecturer in the field of oesophago-gastric cancer and completed his training at the Hutchison/MRC Cancer Unit, University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald.

Dr Turkington’s work has been published in high impact journals and he has received research support from international funders including Cancer Research UK, UKRI/Medical Research Council, Wellcome and the European Commission. As Clinical Academic Training Programme Director for NI Dr Turkington has responsibility for development and training of Clinical Academics in Northern Ireland. In his role as a CLIA Laboratory Director at Almac Diagnostics he is involved in the design and international delivery of clinical trials using biomarkers on behalf of multiple large pharmaceutical companies.

Dr Turkington’s principle research interests include oesophago-gastric cancer and the analysis of genomic datasets for the discovery of biomarkers and mechanisms of resistance to chemotherapeutic agents. These discoveries are being translated into clinical advances through the implementation of biomarker-led clinical trials. As part of the oesophago-gastric cancer team at Queen’s University Belfast he seeks to transform the care of oesophago-gastric and pancreatic cancer patients through the integration of laboratory discoveries, translational science and clinical research.

Prof Rebecca Fitzgerald

Rebecca Fitzgerald MACantab. MD FMedSci EMBO is Professor of Cancer Prevention at the University of Cambridge. She is Director of the newly established Early Detection Institute which is part of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre and also leads the Cambridge member centre for the CRUK International Alliance in Early Detection (ACED). Rebecca practices medicine as Hon. Consultant in Gastroenterology and Cancer Medicine at Addenbrooke's Hospital. The focus of her own research group is to investigate the steps in malignant transformation in the oesophagus and stomach and to use this information to improve clinical early detection strategies. Her work to develop and implement the Cytosponge and related biomarker assays for detection of Barrett's oesophagus and associated dysplasia has been awarded a number of prizes including the Westminster Medal, the BMJ Gastro team of the year, an NHS Innovation prize, the CRUK Jane Wardle Early Detection Prize and the Don Listwin Prize. In 2013, she was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and in 2021 elected a Member of EMBO. Rebecca is committed to teaching and is a Fellow of Medical Sciences at Trinity College Cambridge.

Mrs Thea Towell

Whilst employed I worked in finance in Solicitors’ firms but retired some years ago in order to provide support and assistance to the family as well as to spend time travelling with my husband in our Motorhome. The cancer diagnosis a little over 3 years’ ago has meant my time is now occupied attending hospital appointments. I am a keen (but not very good) golfer and enjoy cooking and fine dining although food is now one of my issues. Richard and I have been married for almost 50 years, my ambition is to at least reach that milestone and have challenged my Consultant Oncologist to help me reach that target.

Mr Andrew Davies

Andrew Davies is a Consultant Upper GI surgeon at Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHSFT and an honorary Reader at King’s College London. He graduated from Edinburgh University before completing his surgical training in London including an MD on the staging and individualised management of oesophago-gastric cancer at KCL. He was awarded two minimally invasive surgery travelling fellowships to Pittsburgh, USA and Pretoria, SA. His clinical and research interests include Prehabilitation and Survivorship, including being the CI of the PRE-EMPT trial and RESTORE study respectively.

Prof Maria A Hawkins

A clinician scientist in precision radiotherapy committed to improving outcome through research investigating effects in normal tissue and novel agents-- novel radiation combinations. Professor of Radiotherapy at University College London Sept 2019, having been an MRC Group leader, in Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology, University of Oxford- 2012-2019.

She is now the clinical director of CRUK City of London RADNET Radiation Research Unit, and director of translational research at UCL/UCLH and proton centre.

She has developed and currently testing in clinical trials, novel radiotherapy including protons in cancers of unmet need (oesophagus pancreas ,hepatobilliary) and findings of radiobiology research are being investigated in 2 national studies. She is the CI of 4 CRUK funded trials including radiation novel agents combination in phase I ( in oesophageal cancer), and the preoperative proton vs photon radiation surgery and immune treatment study=PROTEIUS

Dr Piers Boshier

Piers is Post Doctoral Clinical Research Fellow at the Francis Crick Institute and a Specialist Registrar in Upper Gastrointestinal Surgery at Imperial College. His research focuses on novel strategies for the managing advance UGI cancers, including biomarkers of treatment response.

Mr Krishna Moorthy

Mr Krishna Moorthy is a Senior Lecturer and Consultant Upper GI Surgeon in Imperial College. He co-developed the PREPARE prehabilitation programme in Imperial College which won the BMJ Surgical team and Patient Engagement awards. He is also the co-founder of Onkohealth, a digital health start-up, which has partnered with Macmillan Cancer Support and multiple NHS cancer alliances to implement digital prehabilitation across all cancer pathways.

MSD are sponsoring the upcoming UKIOG Inaugural meeting, where we have a stand. MSD has had no influence over the agenda, content, arrangements or associated outputs, except to ensure compliance with the terms of the ABPI Code of Practice.