Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit at Leeds Fellowship- developing a future chief investigator of advanced radiotherapy clinical trials

Background: Radiotherapy is a key component of the curative management of approximately 50% of patients with cancer.

Better understanding the role of radiotherapy in precision medicine and survivorship issues including long-term toxicity is required.

With improved survival, there is an increasing need to consider the role of re-irradiation (repeated treatment with radiotherapy).

The UK has led multiple practice-changing radiotherapy clinical trials, but currently there is a lack of chief investigators (CIs) and therefore there is an urgent need to foster the career development of future CIs.

Radiotherapy trials are inherently complex, given that they typically evaluate multiple different interacting interventions (for example, combinations of radiotherapy with systemic therapies or novel agents), and require consideration of radiobiological modelling, quality assurance of radiotherapy contouring/planning/treatment delivery, imaging and protocol compliance.

A future CI therefore requires formal training in clinical trial methodology and its application to trials involving technical radiotherapy, precision medicine through radiotherapy-novel/targeted systemic agent combinations, measurement of long-term toxicity and development of predictive biomarkers.

Finbar Slevin (FS) is an excellent candidate to undertake this fellowship, with a strong background in research, technical radiotherapy and previous experience in the conduct of his own feasibility clinical trial.

This fellowship will provide comprehensive training to enable FS to achieve his career aim of becoming a CI of practice-changing radiotherapy trials.

CRUK CTU at Leeds is ideally placed to support this fellowship, with CRUK core funding, current portfolio of early/late phase radiotherapy clinical trials and recent awards to support technical radiotherapy research through CRUK’s ART-NET and RadNet programmes.

Aims: The main aims of this fellowship are: i) Development of FS’s expertise, skills and experience in early/late phase radiotherapy clinical trials methodology ii) Development of FS’s leadership role through experience in leading/progressing projects and trials in the CTRU and involvement in national committees Methods: A 3-year fellowship programme is proposed, focused on the following: • Technical radiotherapy in early and late phase clinical trials • Complex/novel trial design and methodology • Evaluation of precision/stratified medicine • Collaboration with national organisations • Formal training in clinical trials methodology • PPIE Results: The primary outcome will be completion of this comprehensive training to develop a future CI of radiotherapy clinical trials.

Secondary outcomes will include lead author publications; experience of funding applications; development of PPIE strategy for technical radiotherapy clinical trials; establishing a national group of CRUK clinical trial fellows; and leading development of own clinical trial proposal.