CRUK City of London Radiation Research Centre of Excellence 2024

Over the last five years, CRUK RadNet City of London (CoL) has transformed the radiation research landscape in London, bringing together researchers and clinicians with shared interests across our network.

RadNet CoL exploits the organisational infrastructure and connectivity of the CRUK CoL Major Centre, which has established a pathway and operational mechanism to consolidate cancer research from four world-leading institutions (UCL, KCL, Barts/QMUL and Francis Crick Institute) across London, fostering a cohesive and unified approach.

Through our partnership, we have direct access to three Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres, two CRUK Cancer Trials Units, two Academic Health Science Centres, a wealth of advanced radiotherapy technology and collections of deeply-phenotyped patient cohorts from a diverse population of over 10 million.

At its inception, RadNet CoL set out to attract established investigators and promising early career researchers to apply their expertise to improving our understanding of radiation therapy in adult and paediatric cancers.

During RadNet 1, we successfully focused on early career staff, and have appointed 3 junior group leaders, 4 career development fellows, a discipline hopping fellow, 4 clinical fellows and have trained 14 PhD students who have followed the renowned CRUK CoL Centre PhD training programme.

By harnessing the breadth of existing expertise across CoL, we have established a network that supports, trains and nurtures new radiation focused research teams.

Through development funds, training programmes and cross-institutional scientific discourse, we have created a new community among researchers, which transcends institutional boundaries.

This has produced new collaborations, established new shared research and clinical infrastructure, and facilitated resource-sharing, data transfer and reagent exchange.

Our multi-disciplinary approaches and complementary discovery and clinical expertise have driven advances in radiation biology and translational radiation oncology, including: • Insights into the role of stem-like cancer cells, the tumour microenvironment and DNA damage and repair in radiation resistance. • Understanding the impact of radiotherapy on the immune response in the context of the entire tumour microenvironment, has informed novel radiation combination therapies. • A comprehensive platform for radiotherapy data and application of artificial intelligence approaches to interrogate and predict clinical outcomes. • The RadNet Data Hub, a platform that supports clinical research by collating externally funded clinical trial data to facilitate forward and reverse translation. • A network of patient and public involvement (PPI) members experienced in radiotherapy trials. • £34,203,208 in additional leveraged research funding, which includes £12M of additional funds committed for RadNet CoL 2. • 186 papers published in international peer-reviewed journals.

To realise our long-term ambition and maintain our trajectory from RadNet 1, we will strengthen and grow our 4 strategic pillars.

Pillar 1 Innovation will focus on the root causes of post radiotherapy relapse, addressing key questions in radiation biology and oncology required for more effective radiotherapy; Pillar 2 Collaboration will harness our multi-disciplinary capabilities and partnerships with NHS Trusts, industry and MedTech companies to catalyse and accelerate discovery and exploit emerging Intellectual Property.

Engagement with our Patient and Public Involvement group will ensure our research is patient-centred and addresses real-world needs, and we will ensure that we continue to contribute to the wider CRUK research strategy and initiatives in RadNet and other networks across the world.; Pillar 3 Impact will facilitate translation of discoveries into clinical trials, supporting an already world-leading portfolio of novel radiation-drug combinations based upon our discoveries of radiation response and immune interactions as well as advances in fractionation and treatment precision; Pillar 4 Sustainability will exploit external and leveraged funding from partner organisations, charities and industry collaborators to establish permanent positions and research groups in the field of radiation research and will increase investment in our world leading post-graduate program to train the next generation of leaders in radiation research.