Developing resistance to cancer drugs remains one of the biggest contributors to cancer deaths worldwide. Solving this problem will bring us one step closer to improving cure rates in patients.

The Molecular and Systems Oncology Group seeks to understand the underlying reasons as to why tumours go on to develop resistance and find new ways to effectively treat patients who relapse as a result of acquired drug resistance.

In doing so, we also aim to discover more accurate methods to stratify and predict which patients are likely to receive long-term benefit from therapy as a first step towards the development of companion diagnostics. 

To address this problem, our laboratory concentrates on two interrelated areas of precision cancer medicine: (1) targeted therapy and drug resistance and (2) translational proteomics.

Focusing on sarcomas and lung cancers, two cancer types with particularly poor patient outcomes, we have a track record in the successful use of next generation proteomic profiling to deliver new strategies for combating drug resistance and identifying robust predictive and prognostic biomarkers.

Working in partnership with our clinical collaborators at the The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and other oncology centres worldwide, we lead on translational studies for several clinical trials of novel drug agents in sarcomas and lung cancer.

Our ultimate goal is to deliver an individualised approach to treatment and improve the long-term outcomes in sarcoma and lung cancer patients who currently have a poor prognosis.