Image: Dr Stephen-John Sammut
Dr Stephen-John Sammut, a Clinician Scientist at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, has been awarded the Graham Bull Prize by the Royal College of Physicians for his work in personalised breast cancer medicine.
The prize, which is named after the first director of the Clinical Research Centre at Northwick Park Sir Graham Bull, is awarded annually to a researcher under 45 who has made a major contribution to clinical science.
Winners of the prize are also given the honour of delivering the Goulstonian Lecture, an annual lecture endowed in 1635. Previous recipients have included Cancer Research UK's Chief Clinician Charles Swanton, University College London Vice-Provost Professor Geraint Rees and former Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance.
Dr Sammut, who leads the Cancer Dynamics Group in the Breast Cancer Now Toby Robins Research Centre at the ICR will deliver his lecture entitled "Ending uncertainty: predicting response to breast cancer treatment using tumour profiling and AI", this week at the Royal College of Physicans’ (RCP) annual conference Medicine 2024.
Dr Sammut's early discoveries
Dr Sammut’s lecture will focus on the innovative programme of breast cancer translational research at the ICR and the Royal Marsden which sees cutting edge cancer discoveries rapidly translated into clinical trials in a hospital setting.
Following completion of his PhD in 2018, Dr Sammut was awarded a postdoctoral clinical lectureship in breast cancer by the University of Cambridge. His work there characterised the biological processes associated with response to chemotherapy and targeted therapies in early breast cancer, and developed the first machine learning framework that combines data from diagnostic cancer biopsies to predict response to therapy.
This major advance in personalised precision breast cancer medicine resulted in a landmark publication in Nature, which was cited as one of the top 10 cancer research publications by the European Association for Cancer Researchers in 2022.
Using AI to predict breast cancer treatment response
This month, the ICR and The Royal Marsden launched BELIEVE, a ground-breaking translational breast cancer clinical study, funded by the ICR itself, Breast Cancer Now, The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity and the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at The Royal Marsden and the ICR.
Led by Chief Investigator Dr Sammut, the study will use AI to develop predictors of response to breast cancer therapy, understand the biology of resistance to therapy, and pinpoint new drug targets.
The study aims to recruit 500 patients with all types of breast cancer and through a series of blood tests, cancer biopsies, MRI scans and microbiome profiling, will build a comprehensive picture of how cancers evolve during treatment.
Dr Sammut’s team hope this will allow them to predict how well individual patients will respond to therapy and, crucially, enable them to adjust or switch to another treatment where necessary. The study has plans to expand beyond The Royal Marsden to hospitals throughout the UK.
A step closer to personalising breast cancer treatment
On receiving the prestigious award, Dr Sammut said:
“I am deeply honoured to have been given this award which places me in esteemed company, and I am so grateful to receive it. It recognises the value of the world class breast cancer programme in advancing personalised precision cancer medicine we have at the ICR.
“Being able to see how a tumour evolves over time during a patient’s therapy and using that insight to predict how they will respond to treatment brings us a step closer to personalising breast cancer treatment and being able to give the right drug to the right person at the right time.”
Professor Andrew Tutt, Head of the Division of Breast Cancer Research and Director of the Breast Cancer Now Toby Robins Research Centre at the ICR, said:
“This prestigious award recognises researchers who have made an outstanding contribution to clinical science. We are extremely proud to see Stephen win it. It’s an extraordinary achievement for him and it recognises the high quality of our breast cancer research at the ICR.
“Through our strong collaborative partnership with The Royal Marsden, we hope to build on this work, translating it into personalised treatments in the clinic and transforming the lives of people with breast cancer.”