Welcome to the City of London Centre Newsletter, going forward our newsletter will be combined with RadNet News and Events.
News
New immunotherapy target offers hope for treatment of T-cell leukaemia
In the study, a group of UCL-led researchers looked for surface receptors present on malignant T-cells, and found a marker receptor, CCR9, which is not present in normal T-cell. The team developed a CAR T-cell against CCR9 and found it was highly effective in eradicating T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (T-ALL) in mice without apparent toxicity. Funding has been now secured to take this to a Phase I clinical trial. Read more here
Fran Balkwill receives UKRI Frontier Research grant
Professor Fran Balkwill from Barts Cancer Institute at Queen Mary University of London has received a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Frontier Research grant of over £2 million to investigate the most effective ways to remodel cancers to enhance the effects of immunotherapy. Find out more about the REMODEL project.
Victoria Sanz-Moreno receives Estela Medrano Memorial Award
Other funding opportunities NIHR allocates funding for bone metastasis research
The national Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has launched a new funding call for research into bone metastasis, following the identification of this area of unmet need by NCRI. The treatment of bone metastases poses a significant health and economic burden and occurs in 7 out of every 10 people with advanced cancer. Applications must be submitted online no later than 1pm on 4 January 2023. Applications will be considered by the HTA Funding Committee at its meeting in March 2023. More information can be found here
Development Funds
Congratulations to the summer 2022 Development Funds awardees:
Diu Nguyen (BCI) "Generation of a novel in vivo tool to investigate translational alterations during tumorigenesis and in response to chemotherapy"
Michele Mishto (KCL) “Immunogenicity of proteasome-generated spliced peptides derived from fusion-genes in childhood acute and chronic myeloid leukemia”
James Arnold (KCL) “Old drugs new tricks: Breaking myeloid-CAR T-cell immune suppression in neuroblastoma.”
Bela Wrench (BCI) “Analysing stimulation of CAR-T by stressed tumour cells to understand the mechanics of a more functional CAR.”
Event Highlight
Cancer Research UK City of London Centre Symposium
SOLD OUT!
14th and 15th of November at the Crick Institute Confirmed Speakers: Professor Fran Balkwill, Professor Toby Lawrence, Professor Victoria Sanz Moreno, Dr Sheeba Irshad, Dr Sophie Acton, Dr Stuart McDonald, Professor John Anderson, Professor John Marshall, Prof Kamil Kranc, Dr Sam Janes, Dr Sarah McClelland, Dr Kevin Litchfield, Dr Jacqui Shields, Dr Graeme Hewitt, Dr Jamie Dean, Dr Ilaria Malanchi, Dr Jessica Okosun, Professor Jody Rosenblatt and Dr Leanne Li
Keynote speakers: Professor Gerard Evan (University of Cambridge) and Professor Gillian Griffiths (University of Cambridge) Full programme available here
Events
Medicine at the Crick
Escaping the Antibiotic Apocalypse
Date and time
Thursday 3 November 2022, 14:00-18:15
Hybrid event taking place virtually and in person, organised by The Francis Crick Institute, London
This event will look into the so-called Antibiotic Apocalypse, where medicine is reverting to the pre-antibiotic era due to the global dissemination of multi-drug resistant bacteria. This Medicine at the Crick event will cover a number of aspects of the rise in antibiotic resistance and ways to fight it.
The panel discussion will be followed by a networking and drinks reception for in-person attendees. Find out more info in Medicine at the Crick and register via Eventbrite to order a free virtual or in-person ticket for the event.
Seminars
Let’s Talk About…’ seminar series Friday 11th November, 12:00-12:45pm
Alison May Berner (Academic Clinical Lecturer at Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London) Improving cancer care in the LGBTQ+ community.
The seminar will take place via Zoom - register via Eventbrite.
Cancer behavioral science webinar series Tuesday 6th December, 3-4pm
Dr Kate Rendle Achieving Equitable Eligibility, Uptake and Adherence in Lung Cancer Screening: a US perspective’
Hosted by CRUK City of London Centre and the UK Society for Behavioural Medicine cancer special interest group. Register for the event here.
Training
CoL Centre Training programme - 2023 Recruitment open now
Recruitment is now open for the 2023 intake of our training programme. We will recruit 6 CoL Centre funded PhD students, 2 CoL Centre/ CRUK Black Leaders in Cancer PhD students and 3 clinical training follows. More information on our training programme can be found here:
On 26 September we welcomed the 2022 cohort of CoL Centre students. This year’s induction took part over 3 days at the Crick and UCL. The students learned more about the Centre and its training programme and received some advice on how to do a PhD. This year’s students are: Alessandra Perini (PhD, QMUL), Alicja Skwara (PhD, KCL), Amber Rogers (PhD, UCL), Amelia Claxton (PhD, KCL), Ateeb Khan (CRTF, Barts), Caitlin Leo (PhD, QMUL), FoongJun Yap (MBPhD, UCL), Jai Sidpra (MBPhD, UCL), Julia Hlond (PhD, UCL), Rodothea Amerikanou (CRTF, UCL), Yanrong Jiang (CRTF, UCL) and Žan Florjanic Baronik (MBPhD, UCL).
New programme to address the lack of Black researches in cancer research
CRUK is launching the Black Leaders in Cancer Scholarship programme this year, which is developed in collaboration with Black in Cancer and the Windsor Fellowship. The CoL Centre and the CRUK Cambridge Centre were invited to take part in its pilot.
The scholarship programme provides a unique opportunity for candidates from Black heritage background to pursue a four-year PhD in cancer research. Students will benefit not only from being part of our training programme, but will receive in addition a comprehensive programme of mentoring, career support, leadership training and networking led by the Windsor Fellowship and Black in Cancer. By helping candidates from Black heritage backgrounds to build their career in cancer research-related fields, this exciting programme is designed to make an immediate and tangible impact on the diversity of the research workforce. We will recruit 2 candidates onto this programme. More information can be found here. Please share the information with your network.
CRUK CoL Centre Summer Student Symposium 2022
This year’s summer symposium took place on 6 September at Barts. Now in its second year, these events aim to bring together all CRUK funded PhD students from across the CoL Centre.
Sessions comprising of science talks were followed by short talks on entrepreneurship, public engagement and mental wellbeing. The presentations captured the breadth of the research across the Centre and their quality was fantastic. The following discussions showed a great interest and understanding for the different subjects.
Big thank you to all speakers and special thanks to this year’s organisers: Brinda Lakshmi Varahan, Shahin Gibson (both Barts) and Nezka Zupan, Rhyla Mae Santiago (both UCL CI).
Meet Our RadNet Community, in every newsletter we will be introducing to our RadNet Community. Please do email a photo and small paragraph on your research tocruk-radnet-cityoflondon@ucl.ac.uk
Dr Lisa Whittaker
Dr Lisa Whittaker joined the Public Engagement team in the Centre for Medical Engineering at KCL in July this year having previously worked as a freelancer on the Radiation Revealproject. Lisa is Patient and Public Engagement Coordinator and supports researchers with their engagement activities involving patients. She also leads on public engagement across CRUK RadNet City of London (CoL) providing advice and support for RadNet CoL researchers, enabling them to develop high quality public engagement activities. Please get in touch with Lisa if you would like support with public and patient involvement and engagement and any training in this area lisa.whittaker@kcl.ac.uk
CRUK Network Fund: RadNet Autumn 2022 Deadline: 3rd Nov 2022
Apply for the CRUK Network funding;
The Seed funding has increased from £100k up to £150k
Applications must involve a minimum of two partnering UK Academic institutions
The duration for projects will remain one year, but CRUK will be as flexible as possible on start dates and no-cost extensions.
Recruiting and establishing collaboration agreements can start as soon as GAL is received before the project start date, please bear this in mind when stating project start date.
As before, there will be an internal review and selected projects would be put forward for the final submission.
Once approved CRUK will send a link to open an application form on Flexi-Grant
CRUK RadNet City of London and the European Working Group on the Radiobiology of Molecular Radiotherapy are delighted to announce that the 2nd International Workshop on Radiobiology of Molecular Radionuclide Therapy (IWRMR) symposium and workshop will take place as a face-to-face event (with an online observation option) from 13th to 14th March 2023 at the Francis Crick Institute. The meeting provides a broad platform for presentation of cutting–edge radionuclide biological radiation research, with space to discuss lessons learned from external beam radiotherapy. The workshop will also facilitate the development of new collaborations in dedicated sessions that complement the oral and poster presentations.
Professor Fran Balkwill from Barts Cancer Institute at Queen Mary University of London has received a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Frontier Research grant of over £2 million to investigate the most effective ways to remodel cancers to enhance the effects of immunotherapy. 
ational Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has launched a new funding call for research into bone metastasis, following the identification of this area of unmet need by NCRI. The treatment of bone metastases poses a significant health and economic burden and occurs in 7 out of every 10 people with advanced cancer. Applications must be submitted online no later than 1pm on 4 January 2023. Applications will be considered by the HTA Funding Committee at its meeting in March 2023. 
Alison May Berner (Academic Clinical Lecturer at Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London) 
e Rendle
ng of science talks were followed by short talks on entrepreneurship, public engagement and mental wellbeing. The presentations captured the breadth of the research across the Centre and their quality was fantastic. The following discussions showed a great interest and understanding for the different subjects.
