Newcastle University Centre for Cancer

Cancer Research Horizons announces winners of its 2025 Innovation and Entrepreneurship Awards Cancer Research Horizons, the innovation arm of Cancer Research UK, has announced the winners of its third Innovation and Entrepreneurship Awards.

Their award-winning Microsatellite Instability Plus (MSI-Plus) assay combines the detection of MSI markers and BRAF/RAS mutations in one test — using advanced sequencing technology that works even from minimal DNA samples. 🧬

Read more here:

www.cancerresearchhorizons.com/news-and-eve...

🏆 Huge congratulations to Professor Sir John Burn and his team!

They’ve won the CRUK Research Horizons “Translational Project of the Year” Award, recognising their efforts toward turning cancer research into real-world patient impact. 💙

#CancerResearch #InnovationInOncology

👏 Congrats to Prof Robson & Dr Buskin (NU Cancer), Prof Heer (ICL) & Prof Chimusa (Northumbria) on securing £497K from @prostatecanceruk.bsky.social
to study gene mutations in men of African ancestry, helping to build new, representative disease models.

💙 1 in 8 UK men will develop prostate cancer — but the risk is twice as high for men of African ancestry.

Yet, research in this group is still limited. That needs to change.

#MensHealth #ProstateCancer

Last week on #WorldCancerResearchDay the whole lab and other colleagues from @nucancer.bsky.social turned into bakers to help fundraising for @cancerresearchuk.org, a charity close to us for their commitment to fund groundbreaking projects in cancer research. Lovely seeing the public engaged!

Lisa is the Principal Investigator of the group but she still enjoys spending time in the lab to drive the work to beat blood cancer. ​

Research is not a solo effort. ​
It takes teamwork. It takes belief. It takes collaboration.
We know what it takes to beat blood cancer and so does @dr-ahlamq.bsky.social whose work is funded by @bloodcanceruk.bsky.social grant co-led by Lisa & @letimarchetti.bsky.social​
#BloodCancerAwarenessMonth​

You can read the paper using the QR code below:

🚨New work from the #NUCancer Paediatric Brain Tumour Group shows not all MYC/MYCN-amplified medulloblastomas are the same.

🔹 Some patients face near-incurable disease & need new therapies
🔹 Others can survive long-term with current treatment

#ChildhoodCancer #Medulloblastoma

Nanobodies restore stability to cancer-associated mutants of tumor suppressor protein p16INK4a Burbidge et al. characterize nanobodies against the tumor suppressor and CDK4/6 inhibitor p16INK4a in vitro and in cells. They show the nanobodies restore mutant p16INK4a stability. Nanobody binding t...

🧬 Engineered nanobodies binding and stabilizing cancer-mutant p16INK4a—without blocking its CDK6 interaction or cell-cycle arrest function, in press at Structure from Endicott @nucancer.bsky.social and @lauraitzhaki.bsky.social groups!

📖 www.cell.com/structure/fu...

Eleanor’s work, part of the
@colospeed.bsky.social study
network, COLO-COHORT, aims to develop a tool to identify those most at risk of bowel cancer and polyps, and explore links between the microbiome and cancer development.

Great job Eleanor! 👏

Celebrating Excellence: NU Cancer Conference 2025 Prize winner spotlight 🏆

Congrats to Dr. Eleanor Hackney on winning a poster award! Eleanor shined a light on her research around the utility of multiple FIT testing in symptomatic colorectal cancer patients. 🧪

#CancerResearch

Their important research aims to uncover possible causes behind the rise in early onset colorectal cancer (EOCRC) and improve early diagnosis and support services for those affected. 🧬💙

We're proud to see this vital work being recognised and funded! 🙌

🎉 Huge congratulations to Prof. Linda Sharp, Dr. Laura Woods & Dr. Christina Dobson on receiving a £40,000 grant from @HDR_UK North for their 9-month project: “Epidemiology of Early Onset Colorectal Cancer in England” 👏

#ColorectalCancer #EarlyDiagnosis #PublicHealth

🚨 New publication

Prof. Mike Waring & team have advanced micelle-promoted DNA-encoded library synthesis through surfactant optimisation.

Published in @orgbiomolchem.rsc.org.

🔬 Read more: pubs.rsc.org/.../ArticleL...

#CancerResearch #MedicinalChemistry #DrugDiscovery

Images of two individuals looking at the camera. Both are headshots with each person smiling. A woman wears a navy jumper and a silver cross necklace; a man wears a smart, blue and red striped shirt.

Congratulations to two of our scientists, professors Ruth Plummer and Stephen O’Brien, who have been appointed as national cancer drug experts by @england.nhs.uk, leading in ensuring patients have the best possible access to new cancer treatments.

#WeAreNCL

Her clever Newcastle-themed example charmed the audience, helping to show why #LongReads > #ShortReads for this type of research.

Well done Eleanor! 🔬

🏆 NU Cancer Conference 2025: Prize Winner Spotlight

PhD student Eleanor Woodward won a Flash Talk Award for her work on characterising structural variants in tumour samples using long-read sequencing via
@oxfordnanopore.bsky.social platforms. 🧬

#CancerResearch #PhDLife #WomenInSTEM

The funding will help support his research efforts to understand how radiation can affect tumours, the immune system and liver tissue, and how radiation could make immunotherapies more effective.

Well done Abdullah!

Congratulations to Abdullah Malik, who has recently been awarded a support grant from LIVErNorth, a support charity for #liver #cancer patients based in the North East.

Louisa identified new therapeutics that indirectly target MYC—as single agents or as drug combinations 💊

These show great pre‑clinical promise, with hopes of bringing them to the clinic in the future.

Great job Louisa! 👏

🏆 #NUCancer Conference 2025: Prize Winner Spotlight

Congratulations to Louisa Taylor, PhD, winner of a Flash Talk Award for her cutting-edge work on high-risk MYC-amplified #medulloblastoma. 🔬💡

#childhoodcancer #childhoodcancerawareness #pediatriccancer #cancerresearch

Generation of evidence-based carboplatin dosing guidelines for neonates and infants - British Journal of Cancer British Journal of Cancer - Generation of evidence-based carboplatin dosing guidelines for neonates and infants

This prize was awarded in recognition of her 2023 manuscript titled:

“Generation of evidence-based carboplatin dosing guidelines for neonates and infants”

You can read the manuscript yourself here:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🎉Congratulations to Dr. Shelby Barnett on receiving the joint EPHAR-EACPT Young Investigator Award in translational Pharmacology.

Great work Shelby! 👏

#NUcancer

We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who contributed to this achievement, and to our members, collaborators, funders and supporters who have helped make this possible.

We're delighted to share that @newcastleuni.bsky.social has officially approved renewal of the #NUCancerCentre for 2025-30.

We look forward to continuing this important journey together over the next five years.

The NU Conference was a big success with a superb plenary from Ram DasGupta (CRUK Scotland). Prizes for talks - J Dishington (1st) and H Stewart; flash talks - E Woodward (1st), L Taylor (2nd); posters - E Hackney (1st), K Papa (2nd). Congrats and to all presenters for giving us a memorable day!

Dr Amy Collins is busy at her poster on modelling hepatocellular carcinoma at the 2025 EASL Liver Cancer Summit in Paris. Funding for her work from Cancer Research U.K.

Human-correlated genetic models identify precision therapy for liver cancer - Nature As proof of principle, an analysis using a suite of human-aligned immunocompetent mouse models of hepatocellular carcinoma identifies a promising therapeutic candidate, cladribine, which acts in ...

An important new study on the genetics of liver cancer published today in Nature led by Prof Tom Bird of Edinburgh University with contributions from @damann1.bsky.social, @jleslie1.bsky.social and others of @nucancer.bsky.social.

It was a pleasure hosting @walkolab.bsky.social from the Bart's Centre for Squamous Cancer in our NUCoRE Cancer seminar series this week where he told us about his exciting research on transcriptional addiction.

Our talented PhD student Keara wins a regional prize for her work on developing a 96-well scale model of liver cancer tumour microenvironment. Congratulations Keara!