Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre
The Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC) Network is a unique UK-wide initiative jointly funded by Cancer Research UK and the Health Departments of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
UCL ECMC Leadership
Martin specialises in thoracic and head and neck cancers. He has a particular interest in drug development and designing studies that distinguish patient populations most likely to gain benefit from new drugs and new drug combinations. He is a core member of the lung and head and neck cancer teams and runs a research-based practice, being principal/chief investigator for over 80 early and late-phase clinical trials, from first-in-human to registration Phase III trials.
Prior to joining UCL, John was a Fogarty Fellow at the National Cancer Institute, USA and an Alberta Heritage Research Fellow at the University of Alberta, Canada. He has published extensively in the fields of molecular and clinical pharmacology, DNA damage and repair, drug design and development, and cancer therapeutics. He is a Fellow of the Royal Societies of Biology and Chemistry, an Honorary Member of the Royal College of Radiologists and a Fellow of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Mr Dominic Patel
Research Manager and Centre Operations
UCL Cancer Institute
Dominic worked as a research scientist in the Research Department of Pathology before joining UCL ECMC in March 2022. His role involves closely working with the GCLP facility and the UCLH CRF, creating annual reports, keeping track of active clinical trials and working closely with the CRUK UCL CoL Centre Manger on PPI activities. He is also part of the ECMC Business Leads (CBL) Forum and leads on lab sustainability within the Cancer Institute.
Melanie Fearon
Quality Assurance
Melanie is an experienced in the support, delivery and oversight of oncology clinical trials within the NHS. Her role involves the development, management and oversight of quality management systems within UCL Cancer Institute labs that participate in clinical trials, ensuring that activities follow current clinical trial regulations and guidelines. She provides advice, expertise, guidance and support to all laboratory groups involved in clinical trials on GCP, quality and regulatory aspects.
The UCL ECMC provides key infrastructure within the Cancer Institute (CI), as well as supporting the Clinical Research Facility (CRF) and Cancer Clinical Trials Unit (CCTU) at UCLH. We work with the GCLP Facility at UCL which works in accordance with current regulations for the purpose of clinical trial sample analysis. This ensures we have the multi-disciplinary professional expertise to translate our biological developments to the clinic.
Update January 2023
We have been successful in our funding bid for the renewal of the UCL ECMC. We will be funded for a further five years from 2023-2028 and will be able to progress with our vision and strategy.
Vision and Strategy
Our vision for the ECMC at UCL is to facilitate and enhance the Cancer Institute's world-class strengths to develop novel cancer therapies. We want to ensure that the research within (and external to) the Institute is translating into real world benefits. Our ECMC will be focused on several themes, which are aligned with the UCL Cancer Strategy that was developed alongside Cancer Research UK City of London Centre, RadNet City of London, and the UCLH Biomedical Research Centre.
We will do this by facilitating a scientific based approach to therapy, mixing it with clinical knowledge from our Healthcare Partners and Cancer Institute colleagues to produce the most effective therapies. To deliver our vision, we will take full advantage of our scientific environment and improved clinical infrastructure.
We work collaboratively with a number of clinical partners, including paediatric specialists at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), the Sarcoma team at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore, and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery at Queen’s Square that specialise in Neuro-oncology.
We will design clinical trials that are more inclusive and diverse, ensuring that therapies are thoroughly tested and benefitting those that require it most. The patients and public will play an ever-increasing role in clinical trials. They, alongside a multitude of professionals, will form a comprehensive team which will oversee trials at multiple points along the process. This includes design, resource creation, patient engagement, and many more responsibilities. The UCLH CRF have a very informative section on their UCL website about patient and public involvement.
We aim to work cohesively with our partners within UCL (CRUK CoL, RadNet) to maximise patient and public outreach to better inform them of our current research and break down barriers between academia and the wider public.
Cancer Research UK City of London Centre
The Cancer Research UK City of London (CoL) Centre is a world class hub for cancer biotherapeutics.
RadNet City of London
CRUK RadNet spans four leading central London institutes: UCL, King’s, Barts and the Crick, and unites multi-disciplinary expertise across London to cultivate a modernised radiation landscape.
UCLH Biomedical Research Centre
The NIHR UCLH Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) is a part of the NIHR, hosted by University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) in partnership with UCL.
UCL ECMC Supported Infrastructure
GCLP Facility
Cancer Evolution & Optimised Therapy
Early Phase Clinical Trials
Dr Rakesh Popat
Theme Co-lead: Early Phase Clinical Trials
Click to email. uclh.uclh.myelomaadminteam@nhs.net
Patient and Public Involvement
We are keen to identify areas where we can involve patients more with our work. If you are a cancer patient/survivor or have cared for someone with cancer and would like to be involved with our work then please get in touch.
Another of our key objectives is to identify groups that may be under-represented within cancer clinical trials at UCLH. We are at the preliminary stages of our work with this and hope to use the information garnered from our audit to engage with any groups that have traditionally been less represented within clinical trials.
We presented some initial data on this at the Oncology Professional Care Conference. We aim to ensure we aren’t carrying out tokenistic gestures and hope to elicit real changes within the way we engage the local community.
Achievements
UCL CI and UCLH have had a number of world class successes over the past five years which the UCL ECMC has critically contributed towards.
- Successful First-in-Human study on CD19 CAR for refractory B-ALL led to a commercial registration study
- First-in-Human studies of bi-cistronic and co-transduced CD19/CD22 CARs
- CD19 CAR trials in primary CNS Lymphoma and EGFRvIII CAR trial in Glioma
- A GD2 CAR in Neuroblastoma
- Advanced Adoptive T-cell Therapies targeting Clonal Neo-Antigens into clinical trials
- Developed a first-in-class CD25 TReg depleting antibody in clinical trials.
- Defined the importance of clonal neoantigen-driven T-cell targeting
- FDA Breakthrough Device Biomarker approved for detection of Minimal Residual Disease
- Targeting of tumour vasculature through understanding integrin biology
- Cellular therapy live cell imaging to track immunotherapies efficacy in vivo
- Development of immune modulators for TReg and Tc cell cross talk
- Development of ADCT- 402 Antibody Drug Conjugate from UCL lab to FDA accelerated approval
- Leading delivery of a portfolio of CD3-bispecific therapy studies
- Expanding ATIMP Trials Service in Haematology and Oncology
- Two successful Clinical Research Facilities supporting broad portfolio of academic and commercial studies
- World class CAR T-cell program with 11 trials open based on UCL Research
- Fully Accredited GCLP Facility incorporating a CRUK Centre for Drug Development Biomarker Hub
- Leading TRACERx cancer evolutionary and PEACE National Autopsy Programs
- Translational Site for practice changing STAMPEDE study in prostate cancer
