Isaline joined the ICR in September 2024 as a Postdoctoral Training Fellow. She completed her master’s in chemical process engineering at CPE Lyon, France with an Erasmus year at University College of London (UCL), UK in Medicinal chemistry. She worked as a Medicinal chemist in the CDoT at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard focusing on hit-to-lead optimisation. She then completed her Ph.D. in Medicinal chemistry in collaboration with AstraZeneca under the supervision of Prof. Mike Waring, her research focused on expanding the scope of chemical reactions for the synthesis of DNA-encoded libraries. She went on joining the DEL synthesis team as a Senior research scientist in AstraZeneca, Sweden for a year where she focused on innovative approaches to DNA-encoded chemistries and hit finding strategies. She is now working with Prof. Swen Hoelder on the design and synthesis of selective PROTACs as anticancer agents.

Esmé joined The Generations Study research team in 2024 with Professor Amy Berrington. She came from HEOR, where she worked as a Data Scientist conducting statistical analyses to evaluate the effectiveness, safety and public health impact of new health technologies across a range of disease areas. She completed an MSc in Public Health at the University of Bristol, specialising in the mixed-methods evaluation of trauma-informed approaches to health systems.

Biography

Dr Gary Newton joined the ICR in January 2020 as leader of Medicinal Chemistry Group 3 (previously overseen by Professor Rajesh Chopra). His group is involved in collaborative research with internal and external partners with the aim of discovering new cancer therapeutics.

His group has a keen interest in designing molecules to help understand the target biology as well as developing molecules suitable for clinical evaluation. Collaboration with structural biology plays an important role in the design of potent, selective molecules and helps to guide the tuning of physio-chemical properties required to develop a drug molecule.

As well as targeting traditional, reversible, orthosteric binders, Dr Newton's group are keen to investigate covalent and allosteric approaches as well as protein degraders in order to provide the most appropriate molecules to the probe the biology and help overcome resistant phenotypes.

Dr Newton studied chemistry at the University of Sheffield before completing his PhD on the asymmetric synthesis of tropane alkaloids with Professor Varinder Aggarwal.

Following his PhD, he joined OSI Pharmaceuticals in their oncology division, where he worked on a number targets including integrins and kinases, helping to generate molecules suitable for proof of concept and progression to the clinic.

In 2004, Dr Newton joined NCE Discovery, later Domainex, where he spent the next fifteen years helping to build up the medicinal chemistry group as well as leading multi-disciplinary groups across a number of therapeutic areas.

During his time at Domainex he worked in close collaboration with a number of academic and industrial partners, generating first-in-class pre-clinical candidate molecules against targets in asthma, inflammatory and cardiovascular disease.

Biography and research overview

Dr Florence Raynaud graduated in pharmacy from the University of Paris V where she carried out an MSc in pharmacochemistry. She pursued a PhD in neuroscience at the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, and has been working at The Institute of Cancer Research since 1992. 

Dr Raynaud has been involved in the preclinical development of 20 compounds that were synthesised at the ICR and nominated for clinical development. These include platinum agents, antimetabolites, signal transduction pathway inhibitors, and antihormonal agents (including abiraterone).

Her interest lies in optimising the pharmaceutical properties of new agents to improve their administration schedules. She also supports the first-in-man pharmacokinetic studies of some of these drugs in early clinical trials, and is interested in the evaluation of small-molecule metabolites as markers of whether a drug is successfully hitting its target. 

Dr Raynaud enjoys the multidisciplinary aspect of drug discovery and development which revolve around interactions with chemists, biologists and clinicians. Over the years she has collaborated with a number of biotechnology companies, pharmaceutical companies and academic groups. She was the project leader of the PI3K programme in collaboration with Piramed which led to the development of GDC-0941, now licensed to Genentech-Roche.

Biography

Professor Judith Bliss is Professor of Clinical Trials at The Institute of Cancer Research, London and Director of its Cancer Research UK funded Clinical Trials & Statistics Unit (ICR-CTSU) and Deputy Head of the Division of Clinical Studies. 

A trials statistician with over 30 years’ experience, her professional interests are in the design and analysis of cancer clinical trials; driven by a desire to ensure that trials are efficient and sufficiently robust to provide both the safety and efficacy results required to directly influence routine clinical practice internationally. The focus of her work involves trials aimed at optimising treatment for breast cancer. This has included work comparing different chemotherapeutic agents and refining radiotherapy schedules as well as optimising the scheduling of endocrine therapy. 

In 2021 she was successful in renewing her prestigious NIHR Senior Investigator Award recognising her trials leadership and contribution to UK clinical research, and the impact of her research on patient outcomes. She has published over 200 peer review papers, largely on breast cancer trials (h-index=78, i10-index=188). She is the statistical lead for numerous trials (including PHOENIX, POETIC-A, HER2-RADiCAL, POETIC, PALLET, TACT, TACT2, START, IMPORT LOW & HIGH, FastFORWARD, EPHOS, IES, plasmaMATCH, c-TRAK TN and PRIMETIME) and member of several international trial steering committees (APHINITY, PALLAS, ALTTO, OLYMPIA). 

Focus for contemporary trial activity is on establishing evidence for biologically targeted therapies through a suite or perioperative window of opportunity trials and more recently trials utilising early biological intermediate endpoints (eg ctDNA analysis) to drive therapeutic choices and predict long term outcomes. 

She collaborates with key clinical and scientific opinion leaders and international investigators from Europe and elsewhere via the Breast International Group (REACT:GBG; MA32: NCI-C), via direct bilateral collaborations (PALLET – with NSABP; UNIRAD – with UNICANCER) and with pharmaceutical company partners as required.   

She is currently chair of the UK Breast Intergroup and in 2019 was re-elected to the UK National Cancer Research Group (NCRI) Breast Clinical Studies Group, and is also a member of its Early Disease Subgroup. Internationally, she is a group representative for the Breast International Group and a member of the Steering Committee for the Early Breast Cancer Trialists Collaborative Group (EBCTCG) and Aromatase Inhibitor Overview Group (AIOG). 

She is engaged in research to increase trial efficiency and enable technology to enhance trial conduct methods together with the challenges of accessing routinely collected data to obtain outcome and survivorship data. She is a member of the Trials Methodology Research Partnership Health Informatics Strategy Group.  She has an interest in long-term impact of therapy and was co-chair of the Breast International Group and North American Breast Cancer Group Taskforce on Survivorship. 

Professionally trained as a medical statistician (MSc in Medical Statistics & Information Technology from the University of Leicester and Fellow of the UK Royal Statistical Society, her statistical and trial methodology contribution to clinical trials, particularly in breast cancer, was recognised in 2006 with the conferment of the title of Professor in Clinical Trials (University of London). 

Now, as a member of the Executive Group of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration Clinical Trials Units Network and past Chair of the NCRI Cancer CTU Group she provides leadership across the clinical trials research framework in the UK. Additionally she has considerable experience in grant review committee membership at an international level. Until 2020 she was a member of ICR’s Athena SWAN Steering Group having contributed to its successful Silver Award.  

During 2020/21 she has been a member of the NIHR Urgent Public Health Group providing prioritisation advice to NIHR and giving a valued contribution to the UK’s COVID-19 response.  

Biography

Dr Olivia Rossanese is a cancer biologist and drug discovery professional with experience leading and contributing to discovery and target validation programmes within both academia and the pharmaceutical industry.

She has been involved with the identification of tool molecules, lead compounds, clinical candidates, and two licensed medicines currently in use for the treatment of metastatic melanoma.

She joined The Institute of Cancer Research in 2015 as Head of Biology in the Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery (formerly called the Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit). In 2022, Dr Rossanese was appointed Head of the Division of Cancer Therapeutics and Director of the Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery.

Dr Rossanese is trained as a classical cell biologist, obtaining her PhD in molecular genetics and cell biology from the University of Chicago, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in the Section of Microbial Pathogenesis at Yale University. In both instances, she was examining basic cellular and molecular processes employed by mammalian cells to overcome challenges in organelle partitioning or intracellular trafficking.

Dr Rossanese gained her industrial preclinical drug discovery experience in the Oncology Biology group at GlaxoSmithKline in Philadelphia, US. She was a member of the discovery group for dabrafenib and contributed to the due diligence decision regarding in-licensing of the MEK inhibitor trametinib. She also led discovery and validation groups against targets involved in cell growth, survival, motility, epithelial-mesenchymal transition and metastasis, and modulators of epigenetic signalling in cancer. 

In 2010, Dr Rossanese joined Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee to establish a cancer biology group in support of the academic oncology drug discovery programme. Here she continued to pursue the discovery of molecularly targeted therapeutics for important targets in cancer, including Ras, MCL1, and replication protein A. An exciting output of this work is the discovery of novel molecules that activate the nucleotide exchange process on Ras and may represent a novel mechanism for the disruption of Ras-mediated signalling in cancer cells. 

Dr Rossanese currently leads the Target Evaluation and Molecular Therapeutics Group. The group has a dual role in developing assays and strategies to support the drug discovery process and investigating the underlying biology of cancer targets and the response to targeted therapeutics.

Dr Rossanese is a member of the Cancer Research UK Convergence Science Centre, which brings together leading researchers in engineering, physical sciences, life sciences and medicine to develop innovative ways to address challenges in cancer.

Convergence Science Centre