Biography
Dr Julia Chisholm studied medicine and undertook a PhD in mouse early development at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge. She completed clinical training at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
After training as a paediatrician, she undertook specialist training in paediatric oncology at The Royal Marsden and Great Ormond Street Hospitals. She was appointed Consultant Paediatric Oncologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital in 1999 and in 2010 moved to The Royal Marsden, specialising in the management of children and young people with soft tissue sarcoma and melanoma.
She was Head of the Children and Young People’s (CYP) Unit from 2012-2018 and was appointed Honorary Faculty at the Institute of Cancer Research in 2015. She is an in augural member of the joint Royal Marsden/Institute of Cancer Research Sarcoma Research Centre and is a clinical collaborator with the work of Professor Shipley’s and Dr Huang’s labs.
Dr Chisholm is is one of three consultants leading The Royal Marsden’s Paediatric Drug Development Unit. She is currently the UK Chief Investigator of several phase II studies and is local principal investigator of a number of phase I, II and III clinical trials in CYP sarcoma and melanoma, with a focus on development of novel therapies. She is also an active participant in the European Innovative Therapies for Children with Cancer clinical trials network and member of the Solid Tumour Steering Committee.
Dr Chisholm chaired the early-phase trials committee of the European paediatric Soft tissue Sarcoma study Group (EpSSG), from 2012-18 and served on the EpSSG Board from 2013-2019. She was senior author of the VIT 0910 study which defined vincristine, irinotecan and temozolomide as the new standard of care backbone chemotherapy in rhabdomyosarcoma. She is currently joint international lead for the EpSSG Frontline and Relapse Rhabdomyosarcoma Study, leading on the relapse component of the study which introduces regorafenib in combination with vincristine and irinotecan as a new experimental arm in a seamless phase II/III study.
Dr Chisholm is current Chair of the National Cancer Research Institute Children’s Research Group and sits on the Children’s Oncology Group phase I/II Data Safety Monitoring Committee and the National Cancer Institute Pediatric and Adolescent Solid Tumour Committee.