Cardiff

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Overview

Our Centre

Cardiff ECMC’s vision is to be an internationally recognised centre, significantly contributing to the control and cure of cancer through outstanding translational research, resulting in the development of safe and effective new treatments.

We aim to build on our success to date by expanding our clinical trial resources, while maintaining the quality of our first-rate translational research. We continue to expand our trials portfolio under the leadership of Prof John Chester and Prof Oliver Ottmann, and have an emphasis on bringing new drugs from Cardiff labs to patients in a clinical setting.

Recognising our future needs and long term sustainability, our team expertise is expanding; we have introduced, for the first time, a dedicated Phase 1 project manager to increase connectivity between pre-clinical and clinical aspects of our translational research. We have also recently secured our first ECMC-funded research nurse, who will support Phase 1 trials in both haematological malignancies and solid tumours.

Our ECMC will unite our translational research in both solid tumours and haematological malignancies, bringing together our efforts in shared Focus Areas of common strength - Trials, Stratified Medicine and Drug Development. Examples of key areas of strength include:

Design and delivery of clinical trials
Molecular characterisation of tumours and circulating biomarkers
Evaluation of new drugs for incorporation into national and international multi-centre studies in both solid tumours and blood cancers

We work in close collaboration with key organisations to make our enable our ambitions to become a reality. These organisations include the Velindre Cancer Centre’s Clinical Trial Research Unit, the Wales Cancer Bank, the Wales Cancer Research Centre, Centre for Trials Research: Cancer the Clinical Research Facility and the haematology unit both based at the University Hospital of Wales.

Organisations affiliated with the Cardiff ECMC:

Contact the Centre Manager:

Jo Baker
CardiffECMC@cardiff.ac.uk
+44 (0) 2921 848197

Address

Room 1TB2 31, First Floor Main Building
Division of Cancer & Genetics
Cardiff University
University Hospital of Wales
Heath Park
Cardiff
CF14 4XN

Team Members

Professor John Chester

Centre Co-Lead

ChesterJD@cardiff.ac.uk

+44 (0) 292 074 4367

Professor John Chester is the Cancer Research UK Professor of Medical Oncology at Cardiff University and Honorary Consultant at the Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff. He joined the Cardiff cancer research team in September 2011. He qualified in medicine from St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School (Imperial College, London) in 1993, having previously completed a first degree in biochemistry at Oxford University and a PhD in molecular biology at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow. He completed specialist training in medical oncology in Leeds in 2002 and remained in Yorkshire as Clinical Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology at St. James’s University Hospital, Leeds until 2011.

Professor Chester's clinical practice has predominantly been in bladder cancer, germ cell tumours and head/neck cancers, and he has specialist clinical research interests in trials for bladder and head/neck cancers, including trials of oncolytic viruses and molecularly-targeted therapies. His laboratory research interests include virus-mediated gene therapy and molecular biomarkers of response to cancer therapy.

Professor Chester's work includes leadership roles in the Cardiff ECMC, which specialises in translational research associated with novel trial designs in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia, ‘organoid’ ex vivo model systems and in Next Generation Sequencing. He has been leading in the development of the Phase I trials capabilities, including the ECMC/Astra Zeneca Combinations Alliance trial, FIESTA. He has also served on the faculty for the recently introduced ECMC Junior Investigators Network Group (JING).

Amongst his various other roles are: strategic lead for the Velindre Cancer Centre Phase I trials unit; Deputy Director of the Wales Cancer Bank and Director of the Wales Cancer Research Centre. He serves on Cancer Research UK’s New Agents Committee and the Advisory Board for its Centre for Drug Development. He also sits on the Management Board of Welsh National Research Network for Life Sciences.

Professor Oliver Ottmann

Centre Co-Lead

ottmanno@cf.ac.uk

+44 (0) 292 074 2375

Oliver G. Ottmann is the Head of Haematology at the Institute of Cancer and Genetics, Cardiff University School of Medicine. His professional clinical and research interests focus on the development of novel targeted treatment strategies for haematologic malignancies, including molecularly targeted small molecules, epigenetic modulation and immunotherapy approaches. Malignancies driven by leukaemogenic fusion genes such as BCR-ABL positive acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and chronic myeloid leukaemia have been of particular interest with regard to both early phase clinical trials and translational research. Additional research activities are the biology of leukemic stem cells, drug development and understanding mechanisms of resistance to targeted therapies.

Prior to joining Cardiff University, Prof. Ottmann was an endowed professor of the German Jose Carreras Leukemia Foundation for Molecular Therapeutic Research at the Dept. of Internal Medicine at the Goethe-University in Frankfurt Germany, Chief Physician (Oberarzt) and Head of the Laboratory for Experimental Hematology, and Heads the Section of Developmental Molecular Therapeutics and the Phase I / II Clinical Trial Unit in Frankfurt. After graduating from Medical School at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsselderf, Germany, he was awarded a scholarship from the Dr. Mildred Scheel Foundation as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Laboratory for Developmental Hematopoiesis at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York. Prof. Ottmann is board certified in Internal Medicine, Hematology and Oncology and earned his Habilitation in 2002. He has published over 250 original articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Operational Team

Ms Michelle Lazenby

Research Assistant in Haematology

lazenbym@cf.ac.uk

+44 (0) 292 074 2499

Mr Michal Rokicki

Research Assistant in Haematology

rokickim@cf.ac.uk

+44 (0) 292 074 2499

Ms Michelle Anne Doyle

Research Technician

doylema@cf.ac.uk

+44 (0) 292 074 4524

Ms Sarah Baker

Research Technician

bakers10@cf.ac.uk

+44 (0) 292 074 4524

Dr Gareth Marlow

Research Assistant in Medical Oncology

marlowg@cf.ac.uk

+44 (0) 292 074 5631

Rachel Savery

Centre Business Lead

SaveryR@cardiff.ac.uk

+44 (0) 2921 848197

Jo Baker

Executive Officer

BakerJ21@cardiff.ac.uk

+44 (0) 2921 848197

Ms Maria Evans

Clinical Research Nurse based at both the University Hospital of Wales and Velindre Hospital

Adult Expertise

Treatment Modalities

Biologics

Radiotherapy

Immunotherapy

Surgery

Facilities/Translational Research

Phase 1 Capability

Acute Myeloid Leukaemia
First-in-Man studies
Multi-centre Phase 1 studies

Centre specific translational research interest

Mutation and gene array analysis
New agent sensitivity screening (e.g. anti-cancer agents, Ret targeting)
Biomarkers (e.g. IHC biomarker assay development (endocrine-resistant breast cancers))

Other Facilities

Wales CTU
Clinical Research Facility

Sample collection

Tissue Banking Activity: Wales Cancer Bank: AML Cell Bank
Centre contact responsible for sample collection: Cancer Bank (A Parry-Jones), AML (Dr Paul White).

ECMC funding provides infrastructure support for early phase and translational research. From the ECMC Cardiff portfolio, the following trials have been carried out.

Trial activity between 2012-2015:

Trial by disease type between 2012-2015:

Case Study

Case Studies

TACTICC

Despite advances in potentially-curative therapies, bowel cancer remains one of the leading causes of death from cancer. Researchers at Cardiff ECMC are looking for ways to improve standard treatment.

TACTICC is a randomised trial looking at how the TroVax vaccine and cyclophosphamide affect the immune system in people with advanced bowel cancer. The trial was designed in Cardiff, based on local lab data and recruitment was successfully completed with patients from Cardiff.

Eligible patients had stable or responding disease, following completion of an initial 12 weeks of palliative chemotherapy, and were randomised to one of four groups:

Group 1: Watch and wait, i.e. no additional treatment unless clinically indicated.
Group 2: Metronomic cyclophosphamide only.
Group 3: Vaccination with TroVax^® (intra-muscular administration) only
Group 4: Metronomic cyclophosphamide, followed by TroVax^®vaccination.

A total of 54 patients were randomised: 9 to each of groups 1 and 2 and 18 to each of groups 3 and 4.

The study was not powered to compare survival, but investigated immune response, following administration of the therapies, and clinical outcome.

The trial has successfully completed in March 2016, and follow-up data will be collected until February 2017. Preliminary results are not yet ready for release, but are suggestive of a positive correlation between specific anti-cancer immune responses and both increased Progression Free and Overall Survival. Potential future randomised Phase II/III trials look likely with survival end-points which, if positive, would potentially change clinical practice.

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Operational Team