Evolution & Translational Genomics
Dr Ben O'Leary's group work to understand how cancer evolution impacts the effectiveness of the treatments offered to patients in the clinic.
Research, projects and publications in this group
We focus predominantly on cancers that arise in the lining of the mouth and throat, usually referred to collectively as ‘head and neck’ cancers.
The Evolution and Translational Genomics group work to understand how cancer evolution impacts the effectiveness of the treatments offered to patients in the clinic. We focus predominantly on cancers that arise in the lining of the mouth and throat, usually referred to collectively as ‘head and neck’ cancers.
Alongside surgery, these cancers are often treated with radiotherapy and immunotherapy, with dramatic differences in how effective these are between individuals. We believe we can learn from these differences, and, in understanding how they occur, develop new strategies for better treatments for patients.
We focus on the evolutionary relationship between the cancer genome and the tumour microenvironment – how changes inside cancer cells impact the immune and connective tissue cells that surround the tumour and vice versa, before and during treatment.
We use our unique access to patient samples collected in translational studies and clinical trials to study how cancers evolve and respond to treatment in the real world. Using custom multi-omic, single cell, and spatial approaches, we aim to discover clinically relevant biology in patients and then explore this more in the lab using pre-clinical models, taking insights back to the clinic by informing the design of clinical trials.
Dr Ben O'Leary
Group Leader:
Evolution and Translational Genomics
Ben O'Leary is a Clinician Scientist at the ICR and an Honorary Consultant in Clinical Oncology at The Royal Marsden hospital.
Researchers in this group
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Mai is a Specialty Registrar in Clinical Oncology who joined Dr Ben O'Leary's group in 2023 as an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow on the Integrated Academic Training Programme. She was subsequently awarded a prestigious CRUK Clinical Research Training Fellowship. She is working on novel liquid biopsy technologies in head and neck cancer.
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Email: [email protected]
Location: Sutton
Dilraj is a Bioinformatic Scientist at the Institute of Cancer Research, specializing in data analysis, biomarker development using various omics data, and applied machine learning to healthcare data. Her work focuses on developing data-driven solutions that enhance patient care and optimize clinical research workflows. She is currently working on developing a ctDNA methylation approach for head and neck cancer patients.
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Working as a Higher Scientific Officer in the team, Aida is focused on the wet lab work intrinsic to several projects in the lab. With the lab’s focus on translational science, her role involves managing clinical trial samples and executing a wide range of molecular biology approaches, including developing custom assays.
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Anton is a senior bioinformatician who is part of the Centre for Immunotherapy of Cancer and RadNet group and is working with the team on the evolution of head and neck cancers using multi-omic approaches. He leads a collaborative project developing novel genomics workflows examining the role of the human papillomavirus, its copy number and structural integration, in driving head and neck cancer and the host immune response.
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George is a computational post-doctoral fellow with an interest in translating genomic markers into biomarkers to improve patient care. His current research focuses on the evolution of head and neck cancers in the context of HPV infection and radiotherapy through the analysis of clinical trial datasets.
Dr Ben O'Leary's group have written 27 publications
Most recent new publication 11/2024
See all their publications