Molecular Pathology

Speakers

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Please find below the speakers who presented at the virtual study day on the 7th March 2022:

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 based at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in Cheltenham, UK, and formerly 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 is currently a member of the Cellular Pathology Genomics Focus Group of RCPath tasked with coordinating genomics work for UK Cellular Pathology with NHSE/I and the devolved nations including implementing the National Test Directory for Cancer (or, more accurately, belatedly picking up the pieces!).

He is a Member of the Working Group on Cancer Services of the Royal College of Pathologists, the National Cancer Research Institute skin group and the Steering Committee of the UK Keratinocyte Collaborative of the British Association of Dermatologists for Keratinocyte Cancer Research, the Get Data Out Skin Group of Public Health England and the Educational 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 and has an NHS expert referral dermatopathology practice.

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, MD, PhD, graduated as a medical specialist in pathology in 1993 and in oncology in 1995. Also, in 1995, she received a PhD from the Université d’Aix-Marseille II in cellular biology and microbiology, on the topic of HER2.

Professor Penault-Llorca is currently professor of Pathology at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, CEO of the Comprehensive Regional Cancer Institute Centre Jean Perrin, deputy director of the research team INSERM 1240 IMoST, and head of the Molecular Biology Plateform at Centre Jean Perrin, Clermont-Ferrand, France, and Vice-President of UNICANCER GROUP. She chairs the Immuno- Oncology group at UNICANCER R&D. She is a member of several pathology and oncology societies (ESMO, ASCO, ECP, AIP, SFP). Her main areas of interest as a pathology being female cancers.

Professor Penault-Llorca has conducted various biomarkers-based research studies in breast, ovarian, colorectal, gastric, and lung cancer in relation to response to targeted therapies and immunotherapies. She also acts as a coordinating pathologist for various oncology trials.

Professor Penault-Llorca has written more than 440 peer-reviewed publications and several books on female cancers and biomarker testing methods and issues.

Dr Nischalan Pillay

Dr Nischalan Pillay is an honorary consultant, bone and soft tissue pathologist at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore, Middlesex and Associate Professor of Pathology at the University College London Cancer Institute.

His research is focused on the genomics of soft tissue sarcomas with a particular interest in developing molecular classification schema for sarcomas with complex genomes. His laboratory also uses bio-informatics and machine-learning approaches to integrate relevant data such as epigenomics and digital image analysis with genomics to address concepts of cell of origin, differentiation and sarcoma evolution.

Prof Emad Rakha

Prof Rakha is a Professor of Breast Pathology and Honorary Consultant Pathologist at the University of Nottingham (UoN) and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, Nottingham, UK.

Prof Rakha is medically qualified and gained master (MSc pathology) and MD in Pathology (by examination), PhD in molecular pathology (Breast cancer) from UoN and obtained the Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists by examination. He is the leading member of the multi-disciplinary Nottingham Breast Research Group at UoN.

He is a member of The National Coordinating Committee of Breast Pathology (BIG18), European Working Group for Breast Screening Pathology, the International Society of Breast Pathology, The British Association of Breast Pathology, the NHSBSP Research Advisory Committee, and International Breast Pathology Group. Prof Rakha is the co-chair of the UK EQA breast pathology Scheme, and organises the National Nottingham Breast Pathology Masterclass which is an annual course run in Nottingham, UK and Bologna Italy (http://nottinghambreastpathologymasterclass.com/) .

He published more than 350 publications, co-authored 25 book chapters in addition to 11 chapter in the recent 5th ed. of the WHO Blue book of breast tumours and he runs the national and international referral service of breast pathology consultation cases in Nottingham.

Dr Manuel Rodriguez-Justo

Dr 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.

Dr 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.

Dr 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

Prof Manuel Salto-Tellez

Professor Manuel Salto-Tellez (MD-LMS, FRCPath, FRCPI) is the Chair of Molecular Pathology at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), a clinical consultant pathologist and the Lead of QUB’s Precision Medicine Centre of Excellence. He is also the Professor on Integrative Pathology at the Institute for Cancer Research in London (ICR), and the lead of the Royal Marsden Hospital / ICR Integrated Pathology Unit.

Prof Salto-Tellez is author or co-author of more than 300 internationally peer-reviewed articles in translational science, molecular pathology and diagnostics, has published a similar number of abstracts in international conferences, and is editor or contributor to some of the key textbooks of pathology and oncology. Manuel holds more than £21M in competitive grant funding. He is scientific advisor to 2 companies in the digital pathology and artificial intelligence space.

Professor Salto-Tellez studied Medicine in Spain (Oviedo), Germany (Aachen) and The Netherlands (Leiden). He specialized in Histopathology in the UK (Edinburgh and London) and in Molecular Pathology in USA (Philadelphia). For more than 10 years he worked at the National University of Singapore and its National University Hospital, where he was associate professor, senior consultant, director of the Diagnostic Molecular Oncology Centre, Vice-dean for Research and senior scientist at the Cancer Research Institute.

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.

Dr Elizabeth Soilleux

Liz Soilleux is a Cambridge University Associate Professor 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.

Prof Clare Verrill

Clare Verrill is an Associate Professor and Honorary Consultant in Cellular Pathology at Oxford University / Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She is the PI of Oxford PathLAKE, PathLAKE being one of the UK Government's AI Centres of Excellence and PI of an Accelerated Access Collaborative/NHSX/NIHR funded study evaluating deployment of prostate AI in clinical practice.

She has overseen transformation of the NHS Cellular Pathology laboratory at Oxford University Hospitals into a fully digital pathology laboratory.

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