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

Faecal immunochemical tests (FIT) versus colonoscopy for surveillance after screening and polypectomy: a diagnostic accuracy and cost-effectiveness study. Cross AJ, Wooldrage K, Robbins EC et al. Gut (2019) 68(2) 1642-1652
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30538097

Evaluation of a health service adopting proactive approach to reduce high risk of lung cancer: The Liverpool Healthy Lung Programme. Ghimire B, Maroni R, Vulkan D et al. Lung Cancer (2019) 134(2) 66-71
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31319997

Long-term excess risk of breast cancer after a single breast density measurement. Rebolj M, Blyuss O, Chia KS et al. Eur J Cancer (2019) 117(2) 41-47
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31229948

Probability of cancer in lung nodules using sequential volumetric screening up to 12 months: the UKLS trial. Marcus MW, Duffy SW, Devaraj A et al. Thorax (2019) 74(2) 761-767
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31028232

Methods for Development of the European Commission Initiative on Breast Cancer Guidelines: Recommendations in the Era of Guideline Transparency. Schünemann HJ, Lerda D, Dimitrova N et al. Ann Intern Med (2019) (2)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31330534

Reply to The incidence of fatal breast cancer measures the increased effectiveness of therapy in women participating in mammography screening. Duffy SW, Smith RA, Tabár L et al. Cancer (2019) 125(2) 2130-2131
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30747993

Impact of a Lung Cancer Screening Information Film on Informed Decision-making: A Randomized Trial. Ruparel M, Quaife SL, Ghimire B et al. Ann Am Thorac Soc (2019) 16(1) 744-751
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31082267

Risk stratification in breast screening: A word of caution. Duffy SW J Med Screen (2019) 26(2) 57-58
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30449245

Towards evidence-based follow-up intervals for breast cancer survivors: Estimates of the preclinical detectable phase of contralateral second breast cancer. Aarts AMWM, Duffy SW, Geurts SME et al. Breast (2019) 45(2) 70-74
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30884341

Imaging Biomarkers as Predictors for Breast Cancer Death. Wu WY-Y, Tabar L, Tot T et al. J Oncol (2019) 2019(1) 2087983-2087983
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31093281

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.