The Sarcoma and Melanoma Surgery Group consists of surgical oncologists who undertake both translational and clinical research in soft tissue sarcoma, melanoma and other rare tumours of the soft tissues.

Within the laboratory, our research focus is on developing new treatments for advanced limb malignancies treated by the technique of isolated limb perfusion that delivers regional chemotherapy to the affected limb. Specifically, Mr Henry Smith is investigating the combination of oncolytic viral therapy and immunotherapy with traditional chemotherapeutic drugs to improve both the local control of tumours and to prevent or treat metastatic disease.

The clinical research interests within our group include retroperitoneal sarcoma surgery. Mr Dirk Strauss is the UK Principal investigator for the EORTC International STRASS Randomised trial, which is investigating the role of pre-operative radiotherapy in improving survival for retroperitoneal sarcoma and has published extensively on clinical and oncological outcomes after retroperitoneal sarcoma surgery.

Mr Myles Smith is leading on the development of robotic surgery and intraoperative imaging in gastrointestinal stromal tumour and intra-abdominal melanoma. The group is also looking at optimising the surgical management of early stage melanoma and Mr Hayes recently published long-term results of an international randomised trial of surgical margins in melanoma.

The whole group is part of an international collaboration of sarcoma units in Europe and North America that have developed treatment guidelines and nomograms predicting outcome for patients with retroperitoneal and limb sarcoma. The group has published and lectured extensively on the surgical management of soft tissue sarcoma melanoma and other rare tumours.