Clinical
My clinical research interests are in the pre-clinical and clinical development of novel anti-cancer agents including molecular targeted therapies and gene therapy. I run a number of Phase 1 clinical trials of innovative anti-cancer agents, and I also run the Analytical Services Unit at the Centre for Oncology and Applied Pharmacology, University of Glasgow. My clinical research interests also include the development of novel therapies for gastro-oesophageal and hepato-biliary-pancreatic cancers and melanoma.
Laboratory
Current strategies in the development of novel therapies are based on exploiting our increasing understanding of the molecular basis of cancer. The classical paradigm for developing cancer therapeutics is dependent on demonstrating a reduction in tumour size on serial clinical or radiological assessments as an indication of anti-tumour activity. However tumour volume is a complex integral of growth, involution, necrosis and inflammatory processes, and so volume alone is not the most appropriate parameter in determining response. Coupled with this, the current generation of molecular-targeted therapies have been designed to inhibit specific molecular processes and may not consistently result in objective tumour reduction in patients with advanced refractory tumours despite producing their desired biological effect. My group is attempting to overcome this problem by developing novel laboratory models that allows us to determine how potentially anti-invasive agents might best be evaluated in subsequent clinical trials, and by developing bio-markers of anti-tumour activity to specific agents that can be applied to biological samples collected from patients in clinical trials of novel anti-cancer agents