BLADDER

CANCER

TRANSLATIONAL

RESEARCH

MEETING 2021

The University of Birmingham and King’s Health Partners are organising their third Bladder Cancer Translational Research Meeting - a fully interactive bladder cancer clinical research meeting led by a wide international expert panel of clinicians and scientists in the U.K. The forum is designed to bridge the gap between science and clinical practice and will cover the spectrum of bladder cancer research in oncology, urology, nursing, epidemiology, immuno- and molecular biology.

Despite the substantial disease burden for patients and healthcare providers, bladder cancer only receives 0.6% of cancer research spending. This meeting will thus provide an opportunity to enhance collaborations across the UK and internationally and allow networking opportunities between clinicians and scientists allowing participants to anticipate crucial observations in the clinical practice to inform research activities and vice versa. Marrying these two diverse disciplines will enable healthcare systems to provide more efficient outcome-driven patient-centred interventions in the field of bladder cancer.

Our
Speakers

Rik

Bryan

UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

Rik Bryan is a former clinical urologist, and now a full-time bladder cancer research academic. He is the Director of the Bladder Cancer Research Centre (BCRC) in the Institute of Cancer & Genomic Sciences at the University of Birmingham. The BCRC has particular interests in proteomics & biomarkers, genomics & bioinformatics, novel therapeutics, and clinical research & clinical trials. Rik is also the Chief Investigator of the Bladder Cancer Prognosis Programme (BCPP), the SELENIB clinical trial, and POUT-T.

Jim

Catto

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UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD

Jim Catto is currently NIHR Research Professor, Professor of Urological Surgery at the University of Sheffield, holds honorary posts at the University of Oxford and UCLH and is Editor in Chief of European Urology (2020 Impact factor: 18.7). He has authored over 350 articles, has over 18,000 Scopus citations, an H-index of 72 and has raised over £26M in funding (including NIHR, MRC, The Wellcome Trust, CRUK and The European Union). 

Molly

Ingersoll

INSTITUT PASTEUR

Molly Ingersoll received her PhD in host-pathogen interactions from NYU School of Medicine in New York City working with Arturo Zychlinsky at NYU and at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, Germany. After a brief postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University School of Medicine, in St Louis, MO with Scott Hultgren, studying innate immunity to urinary tract infection, she moved back to New York for a postdoctoral fellowship at Mount Sinai Medical Center, investigating monocyte and dendritic cell biology with Gwen Randolph. Dr Ingersoll moved to Paris in 2012 to establish a group at the Institut Pasteur, where she is currently a Directeur de Recherche. From 1 May, she will head a research group at the Institut Cochin where her team Mucosal Inflammation and Immunity will continue to investigate mucosal immunity in the bladder in the context of infection and cancer.

Caroline 

Raw

PATIENT REPRESENTATIVE

Caroline Raw was diagnosed with bladder cancer four and a half years ago and had a cystectomy. Recently, she started her own business, selling Tropic Skin Products.

Matthieu

Rousseau

INSTITUT PASTEUR

Dr Matthieu Rousseau received his PhD in Microbiology-Immunology from Université Laval in Quebec city, Canada working with Dr Eric Boilard. Notably, he deciphered the involvement of lipid mediators on thymocyte development, and the impact of secreted phospholipases on detection and quantification of extracellular vesicles that are used as biomarkers in several diseases. Then, he joined the team Mucosal Inflammation and Immunity of Dr Molly Ingersoll within the Dendritic Cell Immunobiology unit as a postodoc at Institut Pasteur. His different projects explore immune responses that take place during urinary tract infection and in response to bladder cancer immunotherapy.

Beth

Russell

KING'S COLLEGE LONDON

Dr Beth Russell is a cancer epidemiologist primarily working as part of the Guy’s and St. Thomas Hospital (GSTT) Real World Evidence Cancer Programme. She has been part of team TOUR since 2017 and has completed her MRes and PhD in the department. As part of her role within the Real World Evidence Programme, Beth uses clinical data, mainly working together with urological colleagues on various projects. Beth also works closely with colleagues in Sweden using data from the Bladder Cancer Database (BladderBaSe) on numerous projects. Most recently, Beth helped to set up the COVID-19 and cancer database working alongside clinical colleagues at GSTT. Analyses on this database have aimed to identify the risk factors associated with COVID-19 infection and mortality in cancer patients. 

Lion

Shahab

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

Dr Shahab is Professor of Health Psychology at University College London and past President for the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco – Europe. He trained in psychology, epidemiology and neuroscience and has more than 15 years’ experience in addiction research, tobacco control and health psychology. Dr Shahab’s expertise spans work on novel behavioural and pharmacological smoking cessation interventions, biomarkers, tobacco product regulation and policy, digital health and tobacco and alcohol use epidemiology. Dr Shahab has collaborated with academic as well as non-academic (e.g. governmental and non-governmental) partners and to date has authored over 130 scientific papers, reports and reviews in this area

Jenny

Southgate

UNIVERSITY OF YORK

Professor Southgate began her career at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) in London and obtained a PhD from the University of Leeds.  She relocated to Leeds in 1989, where from 1992 she led the Biology of Normal and Malignant Epithelial Cells group based at the ICRF Cancer Medicine Research Unit at St James's University Hospital. Prof Southgate moved to the University of York in 1999 to the Chair of Molecular Carcinogenesis as Director of the Jack Birch Unit, a small research unit which receives core support from York Against Cancer.

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Her research interests centre on normal human urothelium, with  particular focus on the mechanisms that regulate the balance between differentiation and regeneration during normal tissue homeostasis as a way to identify pathways dysregulated in cancer.  To achieve this, she used normal human urothelial (NHU) cells to develop experimentally-tractable cell and tissue culture systems that can be analysed using a multiplex of approaches, including transcriptomics. Outside of disease mechanisms, she is interested in regenerative medicine where techniques of tissue engineering, stem cells and biomaterials can be applied to restore urinary tract function following congenital abnormality, trauma or disease.

Doug

Ward

UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

Dr Doug Ward is a senior research fellow in the Bladder Cancer Research Centre at the University of Birmingham. His main interest is in biomarkers for bladder cancer detection and prognosis with a focus on NMIBC.  He uses a range of techniques from proteomics to next generation sequencing of urinary DNA to discover and validate biomarkers.

Mieke

Van Hemelrijck

KING'S COLLEGE LONDON

Mieke Van Hemelrijck leads the Translational Oncology and Urology Research (TOUR) Team in the School of Cancer & Pharmaceutical Sciences at King's. She became a Professor in Cancer Epidemiology in November 2020. She joined the Group in August 2008 from Harvard School of Public Health to study for her PhD on 'Metabolic Syndrome and Prostate Cancer: Biomarkers and Treatment Side-effects', which she completed in November 2010. At Harvard, her Master's thesis focused on bladder cancer and smoking patterns, building on her Master's in Statistical Data-Analysis received from Ghent University in her home country of Belgium in 2006.

Mieke has an interest in clinical epidemiology of urological cancers. Since 2012, she has coordinated the King’s Health Partners' Uro-Oncology Programme, which brings together all researchers and clinicians involved in urological cancer research at KHP. In 2013, she became a Visiting Researcher at the Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, funded by a Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research Fellowship.

In the context of bladder cancer, Prof Van Hemelrijck is leading the update and validation of the Quality of Life Module for bladder cancer in collaboration with the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer.

Sponsors

The

Venue

ABOUT THIS VENUE:

FULL ADDRESS:

Edgbaston Park Hotel and Conference Centre is part of the University of Birmingham Group. The University of Birmingham, one of the world’s top 100 institutions, has always been a pioneer: founded in 1900, it was the UK’s first civic university, welcoming students regardless of their social or religious background. Today, it continues to make important things happen. It’s a vibrant community which thrives on being innovative, original and ambitious – values we’re proud to share here at the hotel.

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As befits the diverse international community of Edgbaston, the hotel provides visitors with an inspiring place to meet and stay, in a quiet spot on the edge of campus.

Edgbaston Park Hotel and Conference Centre
53 Edgbaston Park Road
Birmingham
B15 2RS