Molecular Pathology

Speakers

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Please find below the speakers who will present at the study day in 2025. Speaker lineup for 2025 may be subject to change.

Dr Matthew Clarke

Matthew is a neuropathology trainee (ST3) working at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (London) who is finishing a PhD in the molecular pathology of infant gliomas at the Institute of Cancer Research. He aims to specialise in paediatric neuropathology and molecular pathology. He completed a degree in Zoology at the University of Liverpool before completing his medical training at Keele Medical School.

After completing his foundation training he applied for core surgical training and successfully achieved a post in London where he completed his MRCS examinations. However, although enjoying surgery, his thoroughly enjoyable experiences of a foundation post in histopathology could not be forgotten and so he applied to change specialties and has not looked back since!

Matthew is very passionate about pathology and is very actively involved in the different pathology societies, including being the current Chair of the RCPath Trainee Advisory Committee (TAC), a former trainee councillor of the BDIAP and now the deputy meetings secretary, the trainee communications officer for the ACP and assistant editor of the ACP News. He loves to teach and is very involved with public engagement projects to promote pathology to other healthcare professionals, to schools and the general public.

Dr Paul Craig

Dr Paul Craig is a Dermatopathologist Consultant based at North Bristol NHS Trust, and formerly Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, UH Bristol and Fremantle Hospital Western Australia, having trained in Dermatopathology in London with a Fellowship at St John’s Institute of Dermatology, and Barts and The Royal London.

He has been training residents and biomedical scientists in skin cut up for 20 years in the UK and Australia including writing protocols and assessing training programmes.

He is a member of the Test Evaluation Working Group for the National Test Directory for Cancer of the Genomics Medicine Service of NHS England whose role is to evaluate applications to add genomic tests on to the Directory.

He is a member of the Working Group on Cancer Services of the Royal College of Pathologists responsible for cancer datasets, and the Steering Committee of the UK Keratinocyte Collaborative of the British Association of Dermatologists for Keratinocyte Cancer Research, and Chair of the RCPath Dermatopathology Subcommittee and of the Innovation Subcommittee of the BDIAP.

He is also an examiner for the Diploma in Dermatopathology of the RCPath and Past President of the British Society for Dermatopathology.

Dr Matt Evans

Dr Matt Evans is a consultant pathologist in Southampton and at Black Country Pathology Services, specialising in biomarker, thoracic and gynaecological pathology. He is Pathology Lead for Central & South Genomic Laboratory Hub, sits on NHS England's Test Evaluation Working Group, and is an RCPath appraiser of NICE guidance.
He has widely published on predictive genomic and immunohistochemical biomarkers across a wide variety of tumour types. He is heavily involved in the roll-out of PD-L1 testing in multiple tumour indications, and has trained hundreds of pathologists worldwide in PD-L1 expression assessment.

Professor Louise Jones

Professor Louise Jones is a Professor of Breast Pathology at Barts Cancer Institute. Her research in breast cancer focuses on the progression of in situ to invasive disease. In October 2019 she received a Pathology Excellence Award from the Royal College of Pathologists, nominated by her peers for her contribution to research, training and development of molecular pathology.

Prof Andrew Nicholson

Prof Nicholson is an expert in thoracic pathology and conducts research into lung cancers, receiving the Mary J Matthews award for Lifetime Scientific Achievement in lung cancer translational research in 2019. He is referred hundreds of cases each year for diagnosis from clinicians and other pathologists.

He is a past chair of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) Pathology Committee, as well as a member of the IASLC Staging and Prognostic Factors Committee.

He is President of the British Division of the International Academy of Pathology. He has co-authored over 400 peer-reviewed publications, co-authored Pathology of the Lung (2011), the AFIP Atlas, Tumors of the Lower Respiratory Tract (2019), and was a Volume Editor of the 2015 WHO classification of lung, pleura, thymus and heart tumours.

Prof Frederique Penault-Llorca

Professor Frédérique Penault-Llorca is Head of the Department of Pathology and Tumor Biology at the Centre Jean Perrin in Clermont-Ferrand, France. She is also Head of the INCa Molecular Diagnosis Platform at the Centre Jean Perrin and holds the position of Vice President of Unicancer, among other roles.

Prof Penault-Llorca earned her medical degree in 1993 and went on to attain her doctorate in 1996 at the Université of Aix-Marseille II. She became a Full Professor of Pathology at the Centre Jean Perrin in 2003 and an “Exceptional Class II” Professor of Pathology in 2019.

Prof Penault-Llorca is an active member of the French Quality Control Group (AFAQAP) and is also a member of the European Society of Medical Oncology, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and the European Society of Pathology.

Her research interests include biomarkers for treatment, mutation screening and immuno-oncology biomarkers in lung cancer and colorectal cancer. She also conducts research in breast cancer, including neoadjuvant therapy and prognostic and predictive factors, as well as in ovarian cancer, including grading, biomarkers, and BRCA testing.

Prof Penault-Llorca has authored numerous publications covering diverse areas of medical oncology and pathology in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Dr Nischalan Pillay

Nischalan Pillay is an honorary consultant bone and soft tissue pathologist at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and Associate Clinical Professor at University College London Cancer Institute.

He runs a research lab in sarcoma genomics and biology, focused on the identification of biomarkers for early detection, patient stratification and disease classification. He is a co-author of chapters on genomics of sarcoma in the WHO blue book series, and associate editor of the Journal of Pathology.

Prof Manuel Rodriguez-Justo

Prof Rodriguez-Justo is a consultant in Gastrointestinal Pathology and Haematopathology at University College London. Manuel was the clinical lead for the 100K Genomes project at ULCH and is involved in the reconfiguration of genomics hubs in North London. As Clinical Lead in Cellular Pathology he has implemented molecular pathways in Gastrointestinal cancers, particularly in colorectal cancer.

Prof Rodriquez-Justo’s research focuses in tumour hetererogeneity studies on known and discovered biomarker signatures, evaluation of lead candidate antibody and small molecule based therapeutics, validation of genomic and proteomic signatures using qPCR (genomic), immunohistochemistry, copy number variation/amplification (in situ hybridisation), genomic instability (DNA ploidy), genomic and proteomic target quantification using digital image analysis and profiling.

Prof Rodriguez-Justo has published more than 130 peer-reviewed papers, several reviews and book chapters. Manuel is the current lead for the “Prevention, Early detection, Diagnosis and Prognosis” subcommittee NCRI scientific committee 2020.

Dr Ann Sandison

Dr Ann Sandison is a Consultant Histopathologist at Guys Hospital in London and a recognised specialist in head and neck cancer. She has contributed to chapters in textbooks on head and neck pathology including the most recent WHO blue book on the Classification of Head and Neck Tumours and was part of the editorial committee for that publication.

She co -authored the recently published ICCR minimum dataset for ear and temporal bone tumours. She is regularly invited to teach on courses on head and neck pathology in the UK and internationally.

Prof Elizabeth Soilleux

Liz Soilleux is a full professor at the University of Cambridge in the Dept of Pathology, a visiting researcher at Oxford University and the director of studies for preclinical medicine and a teaching fellow in pathology at Churchill College, Cambridge. Between 2018 and 2021, she was the molecular Pathology Lead for the East Midlands and East of England Genomic Laboratory Hub. She undertakes clinical work in haematopathology, molecular diagnostics and autopsy pathology. She completed undergraduate and clinical training in Cambridge, including a PhD in molecular immunology. Towards the end of her postgraduate training, she moved to Oxford to take up the clinical lectureship in Cellular Pathology, prior to being appointed as a substantive consultant in Oxford in 2006. She returned to Cambridge in 2017.

Her research interests are centred on immunology, particularly novel molecular approaches to T-cells with potential diagnostic and therapeutic applications, funded by grants from a range of organisations, including the Medical Research Council, Coeliac UK, Cancer Research UK, Innovate UK and various industrial partners. She plays a major role in teaching at both undergraduate and clinical student level in Cambridge and formerly ran parts of the Oxford Laboratory Medicine (clinical) course. For many years she taught on the Oxford FRCPath course and she was a regular lecturer at the PathSoc Winter School for trainee pathologists. She has recently completed the Cambridge University Postgraduate Diploma in Medical Education. She was formerly the Education Subcommittee Chair of the Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. She is an author of both the NICE Guidelines for Haematological Malignancy and the NICE Quality Standards for Haematological Malignancy.

Dr Roberto Tirabosco

Dr Roberto Tirabosco is a full time consultant histopathologist at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore, UK, since January 2006 and honorary associate professor, University College London, Research Department of Pathology.

He has an exclusive interest in the soft tissue and bone pathology and he has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in the field and has extensive contribution to the WHO blue books series, including the Soft Tissue & Bone, Pediatric, Central Nervous System and Haematolymphoid books.

Dr Elza Tjio

Dr Elza Tjio is a consultant histopathologist based at Harrogate and District Hospitals NHS Trust. She qualified at St Georges' University of London and undertook training posts in Buckinghamshire, Oxford, the South West and completed histopathology training in Yorkshire.

She is a general histopathologist with interests in uro-pathology, autopsy pathology and increasingly molecular pathology, particularly with regards to pre-analytic processes and optimisation of tissue specimens prior to molecular interrogation.

She has a strong interest in training and education, and is a current college examiner for the FRCPATH Part 2 Histopathology exam. She has also held previous roles as department clinical supervisor and educational supervisor.

Her other academic interests include being deputy editor of the Association of Clinical Pathologists quarterly magazine, ACP News.

Professor Mieke Van Bockstal

Professor Mieke Van Bockstal is a histopathologist with subspecialist interest in breast
pathology. She conducts research in ductal carcinoma of the breast. She received her
medical training and Ph.D. at Ghent University (Ghent, Belgium), and her specialist training
at Ghent University Hospital (Ghent, Belgium). She performed a fellowship in breast and
gynaeco-pathology at the Erasmus Medical Centre (Rotterdam, The Netherlands).

Van Bockstal currently works as a Breast Pathologist at the Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc
(Brussels, Belgium). She has an appointment as university lecturer at the Université
catholique de Louvain (Brussels, Belgium). She is the Belgian Representative of the British
Division of the International Academy of Pathology (2023-2025), and she represents the
French-speaking part of Belgium in the European Working Group for Breast Screening
Pathology. She is the Vice-Chair of the Belgian Working Group for Breast Pathology, as a part
of the Belgian Society of Pathology. She is associate editor of the International Journal of
Surgical Pathology.

Prof Clare Verrill

Clare Verrill is Associate Professor of Cellular Pathology with the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences at the University of Oxford and Honorary Consultant Cellular Pathologist with Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Her sub speciality is urological pathology and has her own research group focussing on digital pathology and AI. The NHS Cellular Pathology Laboratory in Oxford has achieved the milestone of scanning 100% of surgical histology workload under her oversight. She is Oxford Principal Investigator for Oxford PathLAKE (one of the UK Government’s AI Centres of Excellence) and has worked with computer science partners to develop AI. She is the Principal Investigator of a phase 4 AI in Healthcare study to evaluate Paige Prostate AI in NHS settings and a Turing Fellow with the Alan Turing Institute.

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