The Cancer Biomarkers Group is committed to translational research conducted with the Drug Development Unit (DDU) and Prostate Cancer Targeted Therapy Group (PCTTG). The group is involved in a significant number of projects with pharmaceutical companies where the projects are either developed as foundations for forthcoming clinical trials, or validation of processes for pharma kits or analysing samples for various biomarkers. The group is also involved in providing expert advice to industry collaborators on laboratory methodologies, and are currently working on projects with Qiagen, Sanofi-Aventis, Merck, Taiho, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Petricoin, Betides, GenMAB, AstraZeneca and Genentech, among others.

The group supports the clinical research conducted by the Drug Development Unit (DDU), the Prostate Cancer Targeted Therapy Group and multiple other clinical trials within The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. The Cancer Biomarkers Group plays a vital role in Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres (ECMC)/Cancer Research UK-funded research, where the assays and processes developed by the Cancer Biomarkers Group are shared with other ECMC centres.

The group is led by Regius Professor Johann de Bono, Head of the Division of Clinical Studies and the DDU, and also supports research led by Dr Udai Banerji and Dr Juanita Lopez. In addition, Professor de Bono is an Honorary Consultant for The Royal Marsden and leads the Prostate Cancer Targeted Therapy Group. Since Regius Professor de Bono became head of Clinical Studies in 2014, the group has been involved in further project collaborations with other departments within the ICR.

The group works on multiple projects simultaneously and has progressed from strength to strength over the past decade. It has established an internationally renowned infrastructure, which enables an increasing number of innovative practice-changing and biomarker-driven clinical trials to be conducted within the division, which continue to become more and more complex. The work done by the Cancer Biomarkers group is essential for the Division of Clinical Studies to deliver personalised medicine and benefit patient care, and significantly contributes to the scientific strategy of the division and the wider ICR.

The Cancer Biomarkers group employs 34 staff, who work closely with The Royal Marsden on a number of translational projects which are highly intensive (both in terms of man hours and scientific expertise) involving predictive biomarker analyses, circulating tumour cell enumeration and molecular/genomic interrogation, and genomic analyses of plasma DNA. We have generated patient-derived in vitro and in vivo models. Our group has been involved in several hundred publications including for example the TOPARP-B manuscript (Mateo et al, Lancet Oncology 2020) and the study of ATM loss in mCRPC (Neeb et al, European Urology 2020) as well as oral presentations at ASCO 2020 on serial ctDNA next generation sequencing (Goodall et al) and on tumour-infiltrating lymphocyte changes following AKT blockade in AACR 2020 (Lopez et al).

• Dr Amanda Swain; Cancer Biology
• Dr Chris Lord; Breast Cancer Research
• Ricardo Morilla; Molecular Pathology
• Dr Olivia Rossanese; Cancer Therapeutics
• Professor Ros Eeles; Cancer Genetics
• Professor Chris Parker; Radiation Therapy
• Professor Nick James; Radiation Therapy

• Movember collaboration (Imperial College, UCL)
• ECMC Collaboration (Multiple ECMC centres in the UK)
• Professor Chris Schofield and Ian Mills (University of Oxford)
• Professor Claire Verrill (University of Oxford)
• Professor Claire Lewis (University of Sheffield)

• Institute of Oncology Research, Bellinzona
• Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York
• Broad Institute/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
• University of Michigan
• Memorial Sloan Kettering
• University of Minnesota
• John Hopkins University
• University of Washington (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Centre)
• Weill Cornell University
• UT SouthWestern (Dallas)
• Thomas Jefferson University
• University of Adelaide, Australia
• Peter Mac (Melbourne)
• Netherlands University of Twente
• Germany University of Dusseldorf
• University of Trento Italy
• University of St Gallen, Switzerland