Lasers

In this series of webinars brought to you by the Cancer Research UK Convergence Science Centre at Imperial College London and The Institute of Cancer Research, London, researchers across the two organisations will discuss key challenges facing cancer research and opportunities for new convergence science approaches to address these. Join us to consider how novel approaches and technologies could shed light on unresolved problems in cancer biology, to innovate new ways to address challenges in cancer and bring pioneering treatments to cancer patients faster.

Hosted by the Convergence Science Centre’s Scientific Director Professor Axel Behrens, the series aims to support the Centre’s mission to facilitate collaboration between traditionally separate and distinct disciplines.

Please join us on Thursday 29th April, from 15.00-16.00, for two talks from:

Dr Richard Lee– The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and The Institute of Cancer Research

Early Diagnosis of Lung Cancer – Lung Health Checks, Nodules and ‘Liquid Biopsies’

&

Professor Zoltan Takats – Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, Imperial College London

Metabolic Profiling of Lung Cancer from Blood Tests to Spectroscopy-assisted Surgery

 

Registration

 

To receive information about how to access this event please email icr-imperial-convergence.centre@imperial.ac.uk

Please note: This webinar is exclusively available only to colleagues across the Institute of Cancer Research, Imperial College London, the Royal Marsden Hospital and Imperial College Healthcare. 

 

About the speakers and presentations: 

Dr Richard Lee

In this talk Dr Lee will provide an update on lung cancer screening, AI approaches to radiological early diagnosis, and the progress and limitations of blood biomarker research in early-stage lung cancer.

Richard Lee is a Consultant Physician in Respiratory Medicine, Champion for Early Cancer Diagnosis at the Royal Marsden Hospital, and joint National Clinical Lead for the NHS England National Targeted Lung Health Check pilot. He is an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London and Team Leader for Early Diagnosis and Detection in the Division of Genetics and Epidemiology at the Institute of Cancer Research. He co-leads the Convergence Science Centre’s Early Detection and Diagnosis theme. Dr Lee leads on biomarker development for the Royal Marsden Partners Low-Dose CT Lung cancer case-finding and DART studies as part of a research portfolio that also includes translation of artificial intelligence research to early cancer detection and screening within the LIBRA, OCTAPUS-AI, and NIMBLE studies. 


Professor Zoltan Takats

In this talk Professor Takats will discuss how the understanding the metabolic hallmarks of cancer has opened new ways for diagnostics as well as for developing novel therapeutic approaches. While the analysis of biological fluids by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) provides a useful insight into systemic metabolism and may also detect early markers of the disease, these datasets give little information about the metabolic network changes specific to the disease. Professor Takats will consider how combined bulk and spatially resolved metabolomics can deliver an accurate picture on the structure of molecular interaction networks and their role in disease aetiology. This information can also be used to develop new, minimally invasive diagnostic methods as well as spectroscopy-guided interventions.

Zoltan Takats is Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, Imperial College London. He has been developing mass spectrometric instrumentation for diagnostic applications for the last 20 years including intelligent surgical tools (aka iKnife). He also serves as the Director of the National Phenome Centre and Science Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute.