Research

Projects List:

• Breast and Bowel Cancer Screening
• Risk Estimates of Developing Breast Cancer into routine breast screening practice
• Policy Research Unit on cancer awareness, screening and early diagnosis
• Faecal immunochemical testing (FIT) for adenoma surveillance
• The validation of interim outcome measures for the evaluation of interventions promoting increased cancer awareness and early detection
• Strategies to reduce social gradient in Bowel Cancer Screening
• Natural history estimation for screening evaluation and planning
• A Comparison of TOMosynthesis with digital mammography in the UK NHS breast screening programme
• Promoting breast awareness and early presentation among Black women 25-50
• UKLS Lung Screening Trial
• Overdiagnosis in the Mammography Breast

Other Activities

• Member of the National Screening Committee
• Screening Editor, European Guidelines Development Group for Breast Cancer Screening and Early Diagnosis
• Member of the Breast Screening Advisory Committee
• Member of the Bowel Screening Advisory Committee

Major Funding

• 2019-2023- NIHR, Policy Research Unit in Cancer Awareness, Screening and Early Diagnosis, £5M 

Recent Publications

Mortality Reduction with Low-Dose CT Screening for Lung Cancer Duffy SW, Field JK The New England journal of medicine (2020) 382(7) 572-573

Sporadic implementation of UK familial mammographic surveillance guidelines 15 years after original publication Evans DG, Edwards M, Duffy SW et al. British Journal of Cancer (2020) 122(7) 329-332

Long-term colorectal cancer incidence after adenoma removal and the effects of surveillance on incidence: a multicentre, retrospective, cohort study. Cross AJ, Robbins EC, Pack K et al. Gut (1)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31953252

Erratum to “Evaluation of a health service adopting proactive approach to reduce high risk of lung cancer: The Liverpool Healthy Lung Programme” (Lung Cancer (2019) 134 (66–71), (S0169500219304702), (10.1016/j.lungcan.2019.05.026)) Ghimire B, Maroni R, Vulkan D et al. Lung Cancer (2020) 139(7) 224

Errors in determination of net survival: cause-specific and relative survival settings Bright CJ, Brentnall AR, Wooldrage K et al. British Journal of Cancer (2020) (7)

Lung Screen Uptake Trial (LSUT): Randomised Controlled Trial Testing Targeted Invitation Materials. Quaife SL, Ruparel M, Dickson JL et al. Am J Respir Crit Care Med (2019) (2)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31825647

Evaluation of cardiovascular risk in a lung cancer screening cohort Ruparel M, Quaife SL, Dickson JL et al. Thorax (2019) 74(7) 1140-1146

A compact system for intraoperative specimen imaging based on edge illumination x-ray phase contrast Havariyoun G, Vittoria FA, Hagen CK et al. Physics in Medicine and Biology (2019) 64(7)

Breast Cancer Screening and Diagnosis: A Synopsis of the European Breast Guidelines. Schünemann HJ, Lerda D, Quinn C et al. Ann Intern Med (2019) (2)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31766052

Impact of choice of volumetry software and nodule management guidelines on recall rates in lung cancer screening Soo E, Edey AJ, Mak SM et al. European Journal of Radiology (2019) 120(7)

Team

Statistician
Oleg Blyuss, Amanda Dibden, Roberta Maroni, Daniel Vulkan

Study Coordinator
Jonathan Myles

Senior Data Manager
Dharmishta Parmar

Administrator
Oley Begum

Biography

I am a statistician by training, educated at the University of Edinburgh and Imperial College, London. I have worked in the UK, Singapore, France, Sweden and Russia.

For the last three decades, my research has been mainly in cancer epidemiology, prevention and screening. I worked on the pioneering Swedish Two-County Trial of breast cancer screening, on which the UK's national breast screening programme was based.

Since then I have taken a major role in a number of other trials of cancer screening, in breast, colorectal and lung cancer. These include the UK Trial of Flexible Sigmoidoscopy whose results changed national policy within weeks of publication, and the FH01 study of annual mammography in young women at enhanced familial risk of breast cancer, which contributed to the NICE guidelines on breast cancer risk management.

I am currently Director of the Policy Research Unit in Cancer Awareness, Screening and Early Diagnosis, funded by the Department of Health.

It is a collaboration between researchers from seven institutions (Queen Mary University of London, UCL, King's College London, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Hull York Medical School, Durham University and Peninsula Medical School). The aim of the unit is to carry out research to inform policy to promote earlier diagnosis of cancer, symptomatically or by screening, and as a consequence bring down mortality from cancer.

In our strand of the Unit in Queen Mary University of London, our team concentrates on research aimed at evaluating cancer screening programmes, and devising innovations to these which will improve their effect on death from cancer, enhance their acceptability to the public and minimise side effects of screening, such as false positive rates.