Prestigious fellowship award for Manchester clinician scientist

10 Jun 2016

Dr James O’Connor, a clinician scientist based in the Institute of Cancer Sciences, has become one of the first two medics in the UK to be awarded a Cancer Research UK Advanced Clinician Scientist Fellowship

The award for £1.45 million will enable Dr O’Connor to build on the research outputs from his current Cancer Research UK Clinician Scientist Fellowship, where he has developed a new method for imaging tumour hypoxia. This work has been hailed recently as a ‘major advance in tumour hypoxia imaging’ by the journal Cancer Research.

In this new project, he will use MRI to image response to radiation and to drugs that modify hypoxia and immune checkpoint activation, with focus on non-small cell lung cancer. The funding will cover salaries for Dr O’Connor and two new post-doctoral research assistant posts, expenses and laboratory costs. 

Dr O’Connor is an academic clinician who spends four days a week in the lab and a further one day a week as a Consultant Radiologist at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust.

He explained his project: “Imaging has enormous potential to guide the development of targeted therapies and select which patients may benefit most from these drugs. However, very little research has evaluated if imaging can perform these roles in therapeutic strategies that combine these drugs with radiotherapy. My work will test if molecular imaging methods are able to alter decision making in models of cancer and in early phase clinical trials”.

Professor Sir Salvador Moncada, Director of the Institute of Cancer Sciences said: “This prestigious fellowship is a fantastic opportunity for James to establish himself as an international leader in cancer imaging. The award by Cancer Research UK is a reflection of his impressive achievements to date and confirms his potential as a cancer scientist. We at the University of Manchester are very proud of his achievements”.