Q&A with Dr James Larkin

We spoke to Dr James Larkin about his appointment as a new Senior Clinical Advisor in clinical research for Cancer Research UK (CRUK). Dr Larkin is a consultant medical oncologist and clinical researcher at The Royal Marsden, specialising in the treatment of melanoma and kidney cancer. His research focuses on immunotherapy.

Which aspects of this new role are you most excited about?

The opportunity to work with CRUK really attracted me to this role. I have worked with CRUK in other roles for a few years now, and to take on a larger role within an incredible organisation that has a lot of resources at its disposal is exciting.

The specific areas I'm most excited about working on are the implications of Brexit and academic training for clinicians in cancer research. I'll be working closely with Charlie Swanton and the wider CRUK team on these. It’s in these areas I see the greatest potential for results and having a major impact on cancer research in the UK in the next ten to twenty years. 

What do you foresee as the biggest challenge in clinical research over the next 5-10 years?

I'm a medical oncologist so I think about drug treatments a lot. The field I'm particularly interested in is checkpoint inhibitors. I think at the moment these drugs are starting to make a lot of difference in cancers which are historically difficult to treat - melanoma, kidney, head and neck, and bladder* cancer are just some examples. We need to try to understand why these drugs sometimes work and why they sometimes don't. We should also be investigating if these newer drugs, particularly in combination with other drugs, can have an impact on other cancers that are difficult to treat, such as pancreatic, brain and oesophageal.

I also think we need to increasingly move towards a strategy where treatment for each patient is very carefully tailored and I think we are making progress towards that - not just within drug treatment but within surgery or radiotherapy as well. There is a big piece of work around how we can be more precise in all treatments for cancers and I hope we'll make more progress in the next 5 - 10 years. 

What do you feel the strengths of the ECMC network are? And where do you see us delivering the most value in the future?

The ECMC network is a fantastic network of cancer researchers, beyond just clinicians, with incredible infrastructure, resources and expertise.

In terms of how we can be delivering the most value, it's about focusing on the strengths of the network. The ECMC network should be complementary to what industry is doing and really try to harness the strengths of the UK science base and the enthusiasm of our patients to be involved in clinical research. 

We do things that are not so easy in the rest of the world. Examples include some of the really detailed research protocols that CRUK has funded in the last few years such as TracerX and Precision Panc.

I think there is a particular opportunity in these newer more detailed research programmes to understand the biology of the disease in a lot of depth, and use state of the art tools to translate that to patient benefit. I think the ECMCs are particularly well placed to do that. 

If you could be present at one scientific discovery, which one would it be?

The discovery of DNA. I get the sense from everything I've heard about it that it was a truly exciting time with rapid discoveries being made in quick succession. It was a real turning point in biology and whilst it is a competitive field, you get the idea it was a really collaborative discovery and also sounds like it was lots of fun. There are surely plenty of other discoveries but that one really stands out to me. 

* A previously published version of this interview incorrectly used 'bowel' instead of 'bladder'. This has been corrected.