Professor Sadaf Ghaem-Maghami, Chair of Gynaecological Oncology, Imperial College London
I am working on a project to diagnose endometrial (womb) cancer at an earlier time point in the patient journey, so that they can
be treated sooner. We have been using the iKnife to test the biopsy tissues taken form the patients which are then tested straightaway.
What is your role in the research?
I coordinate the study, supervise the researchers and PhD students working on this study. I identify suitable patients and talk to them about the study and take consent form them. I am also involved in the clinical aspect of looking after them, taking the biopsies and treating them.
What do you love most about your job?
I find the highlights of my job are talking to the patients, listening to their stories and navigating them through their diagnosis and treatment. The other major highlight is training the junior doctors and teaching and supervising the next generation of doctors and researchers.
What are your hopes for the future of gynaecological cancer?
I hope that women are empowered to know their bodies, to come forward with any worries, to have a fast and accurate path to screening and diagnosis of their cancers. I aspire to find new and less toxic treatments for these cancers.
You can find out more about Prof Sadaf’s research here.
Allison Jones, Senior Researcher, University College London (UCL)
I have been working on a The Eve Appeal and EC funded program of research called FORECEE (4C). Ultimately, we want to produce a cervical screening-based test that can assess risk for four cancer types in one go– breast, womb, ovarian and cervical. The test outcome would be used to assign women into different risk categories for the four cancers and consequently provide key information that can be used to optimise personalised cancer screening on an individual basis.
What role do you play in this research programme?
I lead the laboratory at UCL that was responsible for the biobanking and processing of ~18,000 samples collected over the course of the program. I devised and set up the lab procedures required to ensure samples from over 15 different clinical centres across the UK and Europe were optimally collected and processed. At the height of the program, I was managing and working with a team of five to process the samples and generate the raw data needed by the biostatisticians, who then analysed the data and discovered the cancer risk signatures that form the new 4C tests.
What led you to go down the route of cancer research?
A total fascination of human biology. Ever since I first started learning biology at school I was amazed by the processes that are continually occurring in our bodies every minute of every day – most of which we are totally unaware of.
What do you find most rewarding about your job?
Being able to apply my fascination of biological processes in the body to the development of new ways of early detecting and risk predicting cancer. Working within a multi-disciplinary team of talented individuals with a united focus. Most importantly, being continually amazed by the generosity of the women who donate samples for research and by the stories and strength of those whose lives have been affected by cancer.
You can read more about the 4C research programme, and it’s recent updates, here.
Dr Chiara Herzog, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Innsbruck
A clinical study I am co-leading focuses on disease prevention using relatively simple tools such as diet changes (intermittent fasting) or smoking cessation. We’re looking at the epigenome – little markers on our DNA – that change with exposure to factors such as cigarette smoke, but also smoking cessation, and can indicate disease risk. What’s particularly exciting is that we may be able to quantify by how much these lifestyle changes decrease disease risk on an individual level by looking at the epigenome.
What led you to be doing the job you are today?
After watching lots of House, MD as a teenager and having a fantastic (bio)chemistry teacher in high school, I became fascinated by medicine and molecular details of how diseases arise. Combining these two, I embarked on a degree in Molecular Medicine, I then spent my PhD looking at molecular processes after head injury in a regenerating organism, the zebrafish. Since then, I have returned to my educational roots and am working in a translational setting- looking at diagnosis and prevention of women’s cancer
What do you like most about your job?
There are two aspects to it – one is that I’m learning something new every day. Being at the forefront of research is really exciting and a lot of the time when I get to look at data, nobody else will ever have done the same thing before. It’s also extremely rewarding to do something that has a clear impact on people’s and particularly women’s lives.
What are your hopes for the future of gynae health?
There is a big health gap to be caught up on, as is emphasised by the fact that the UK government is working on a women’s health strategy to make up for these deficits in the past. It’s known (and also personal experience) that women’s symptoms are often downplayed. This can lead to considerable delays in diagnosis and cause suffering. In the future, I hope we can early diagnose or even prevent cancers that affect women and people with gynae organs, but also other disorders- by providing new tools, better training, and a renewed emphasis of women’s health.
Dr Chiara’s work is also part of the 4C project, you can find out more about it here.
Dr Monika Sobocan- Honorary Clinical Research Fellow in Gynaecology Oncology, Obs & Gynae Trainee
I work on a range of projects at the Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London. In one, PROTECTOR, we look at the long-term impact of having your fallopian tubes (or ‘tubes’) removed to prevent ovarian cancer. The initial procedure is followed then by removing your ovaries in a second operation at a later date of our participants choosing or once menopause is reached naturally (which on average is 51 years in the UK). This is compared with outcomes of women undergoing the standard one-step surgical procedure of taking tubes and ovaries out together. A big disadvantage of the one-step procedure is that women undergo early menopause and the possible side-effects connected with it.
Another new project, JHC-REVIEW, which stands for Jewish Hereditary Cancer Review, focuses on understanding the needs of the UK Jewish community more in regards to genetic testing. Jewish people are five times more likely to be BRCA alteration carriers, which increases the risk of developing breast or ovarian cancer. Previous analysis shows, that potentially thousands of lives could be saved by population testing in communities with increased risk for being a BRCA alteration carriers, but genetic services are not currently fully utilised.
We are also working on an extensive service assessment, UKCOGS (United Kingdom COVID and Gynaecological Cancer Study), in which we look at the changes of service during the COVID pandemic for women and people with gynaecological cancers. This will enable us to understand the short-term and long-term impact of the pandemic.
What do you find inspiring about your job?
Our projects do not have instant effects in the community, but they have a long lasting impact on society by providing evidence for informed actions to raise awareness and especially inform deliberate improvement of health service for the wider population. I find it inspiring, that our work can improve service to women in long term.
What are your hopes for the future?
Ideally, I hope we will be able to offer targeted prevention strategies for all at risk for developing breast and gynae cancers through our health services with a small impact on their quality of life.