Our consultants work across Sussex providing oncology and haemato-oncology care. Our priority is to continue to integrate clinical research into multidisciplinary team working, giving patients the opportunity to take part in impactful clinical trials at all points in their cancer journey.
Strong collaborations with BSMS, Sussex University and the University of Brighton Academics allows the team to develop the vital collaborations which enable patients access to cutting edge translational research close to home. A number of our clinicians also have affiliated roles in external organisations building links beneficial to promoting patient centred research, such as Macmillan, NIHR, and the Medical Research Council. We recruit approximately 500 patients a year into a broad portfolio of cancer clinical trials which includes receiving trial treatment at the clinical research facility, chemotherapy units or radiotherapy centres.
Our Research
Our broad portfolio of trials covers screening, diagnosis, imaging, treatment, symptom management and quality of life. UH Sussex East has been the top recruiting site for multiple UK cancer trials. We have recruited the first UK patient to a number of studies including two Ovarian cancer studies Colombo 2023, and ICON9.
The Uro-Oncology group in Sussex has successfully recruited to STAMPEDE, a large national prostate cancer study. This practice changing study has proven the benefits of new and additional treatments (both drugs and radiotherapy) and has led to our recognition in national and international peer reviewed journals James 2016, James 2017.
The Gynaecology cancer team has a track record recruiting to interventional and observational studies giving patients opportunities to access novel diagnostic techniques (Rockets, MROC), new biomarkers, new drugs (ICON9, OCTOPUS, KEYNOTE-775), frailty assessment ahead of chemotherapy (FAIR-O), consider preventative surgery or to be part of a rare gynaecology cancer virtual database (RANGO).
The Breast team continue to successfully recruit to a number of multi-centre trials such as ANTHEM, Bridging the age gap, IMPARTER, OPTIMA, POETIC-A and HERdiPredict.
We are also currently recruiting into a number of observational studies across all Colorectal cancer and in optimising the bowel screening systems. Regarding the local expertise and interest in Anal Cancer, the Trust is one of the top 10 recruiting sites to the cancer research UK platform study PLATO, where Dr Duncan Gilbert is also translational lead.
Key Outputs
Our clinical haematologists work collaboratively with the Chevassut/Jones/Morgan and Pepper Lab at BSMS, combining clinical and scientific skills to understand disease processes and identify novel therapeutic targets. This collaboration has led to important new evidence of the role of endogenous TLR9 signalling in CLL biology with potential therapeutic implications Kennedy 2021, M Kortylewski 2021, Burley 2022.
Our haematology team have contributed to a number of other high impact, practice changing studies El-Sharkawi 2019, Eyre 2019, McCulloch 2021, Wei 2020, Jackson 2019, Jackson 2020 and other successful collaborations with Sussex University academics. A major success was Brighton’s participation as second highest recruiter in the QUAZAR Study of oral azacytidine in patients with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia, in remission post-induction treatment, which demonstrated prolonged survival by 10 months. This was a landmark publication in the NEJM and led directly to NICE approval of oral azacytidine for AML patients, with which the Lead Investigator, Professor Tim Chevassut, was strongly involved and has been practice changing within the UK. Another study, MEDI4736 was the first to study immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy in Myelodysplasia, currently in publication. A collaborative project with Dr Rhys Morgan at Sussex University to bank umbilical cord blood samples provides an opportunity for pregnant women in Brighton to participate in local research on haematopoietic stem cells.
Successful recent fellowships have resulted in national multi-centre studies led by the fellows as chief investigators. Q-ABC is a national prospective cohort study investigating long term quality of life outcomes in patients treated with either surgery or chemoradiotherapy for bladder cancer, funded through £650,000 of commercial grant funding, where Dr Sally Appleyard is the grantholder and CI. BRITER (jointly funded by the Sussex Cancer Fund and Brains Trust), led by Dr Cressida Lorimer, aimed to assess whether changes seen on brain MRI scans predict who may develop a worsening of quality of life after radiotherapy treatment for a Glioblastoma.
Local expertise in anal cancer was central to the development of improved radiotherapy techniques and the associated national guidance (Muirhead 2014) and audit. It has led to projects aiming to better predict patient outcomes, initially funded by the Sussex Cancer Fund (Gilbert 2013) then latterly Bowel Research UK (Wakeham 2021) and now Cancer Research UK as part of the PLATO trial (Jones 2016)
Current Projects
We continue to embed research into all aspects of our clinical care and ensure patients across Sussex are able to access practice changing studies as possible, and provide opportunities for members of staff of all disciplines.
Dr Duncan Gilbert is affiliated with MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL, where he is the project lead for the PATCH (Gilbert 2018) STAMPDE trials, and prostate cancer lead for Add Aspirin (Coyle 2018) He is CI for REFINE (Merrick 2022) a multi-arm trial testing reduced frequency immunotherapy across cancers, as part of an initiative to optimise cancer treatments for patients and health systems. Well established local academic haemato-oncology collaborations have led to the successful research fellows program. Currently two oncology, one gynae-oncology, and five haematology fellows are being supervised by a variety of local academics/clinicians.
In Cancer, the potential role of stress in recurrence of advanced epithelial ovarian cancer is being investigated by Dr Sarah Baron and her University of Brighton academic supervisor Dr Mel Flint (funded by the Sussex Cancer Fund). Dr Hamish Sinclair, supervised by Dr Duncan Gilbert (funded by the Sussex Cancer Fund) is looking at the gut microbiome in patients undergoing chemoradiotherapy for anal cancer. Dr Stephen Robinson is investigating extracellular vesicles-based liquid biopsies for the identification of novel Glioblastoma biomarkers and clinical implementation and is being supervised by Dr George Giamas (University of Sussex).
There are four current haematology PhD research fellowships being supervised by Professors Tim Chevassut, Andrea Pepper and Chris Pepper based at BSMS. Dr Eleni Ladikou funded by the Sussex Cancer Fund is looking at the microenvironmental biology of acute myeloid leukaemia. Dr Hyun Park, also partly funded by the Sussex Cancer Fund, is looking at targeting an important leukaemia gene called DNMT3A that is commonly mutated in AML and is involved in the important process of cancer epigenetics through methylation of DNA. Dr David Palmer, a haematology registrar funded through the Trust Fellowship Programme is investigating the link between DNMT3A and another important leukaemia gene called RUNX1 that is a master regulator of blood formation. Dr Iona Ashworth, also funded through the Trust Fellowship Programme will be studying cellular signalling in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL).
Key Contacts
Brighton:
- Prof Tim Chevassut, Clinical Haematologist and basic scientist, BSMS and RSCH
- Prof Andrea Pepper, Reader and laboratory-based research scientist, runs the Leukaemia and Lymphoma research team, BSMS
- Prof Chris Pepper, Cancer biology, Leukaemia, BSMS
- Dr Duncan Gilbert Oncology Consultant, affiliated with MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL
- Dr Rebecca Herbertson Clinical Oncologist (gynaecology)
Worthing and St Richard’s:
- Mr Daniel Baird, General and Colorectal Consultant Surgeon, Worthing
- Mr Mirza Khurrum Baig, General and Colorectal Consultant Surgeon, Worthing
- Mr Gianluca Colucci General and Colorectal Consultant Surgeon, Worthing
- Dr Jackie Sham, Clinical Oncologist , Oncology Clinical Audit lead at Sussex Cancer Centre,, lead for non-surgical oncology group in Breast Cancer for SCC
- Dr Adrian Moss, Clinical Oncologist (Breast care), Worthing
- Dr Ashok Nikapota, Clinical Oncologist, Urology
- Dr Santosh Narat, Consultant Haematologist, Worthing
- Dr John Laurie, Consultant Haematologist, Worthing