CRUK Imperial and ICR Clinical Academic Training Programme / Year 1 QQ2

Summary The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and Imperial College London (Imperial) wish to continue our joint Clinical Academic Training Programme.

The programme is hosted at two of the UK’s leading research institutions – Imperial and ICR ranked first and second respectively in REF 2021.

This programme and the CRUK Convergence Science Centre represent a unique partnership that brings together a cancer-specific research institute and hospital and a multi-faculty university, focused entirely on science, engineering, medicine and business with its own associated multi-specialty hospital network.

Together, these two institutions provide a range of potential exposures and experiences for trainees that they are unlikely to obtain elsewhere in the UK.

Since its inception in 2019, we have developed an integrated and flexible programme that seeks to develop the next generation of clinical academic leaders. We have also established a new intercalated MB-PhD stream for undergraduate medical students. Overall, the programme has been oversubscribed both by potential students and supervisors.

We seek to expand the programme in the next five years.

This reflects its popularity and our desire to widen both the range of projects that we can offer and the range of applicants from whom we recruit.

As a result, we request a slight funding increase to five MB-PhD students and five Clinical Research Training Fellowships (CRTFs) each year.

The MB-PhD studentships will continue to be multidisciplinary, offering convergence science projects to provide a unique training offering to medical students.

Our CRTF programme offers a range of projects across both institutions to trainees in a wide range of specialties, focusing on our strengths in translational, clinical and convergence science research.

Through our programme we: • Provide flexible research doctorate opportunities for clinicians across all specialities relevant to cancer. • Attract the brightest medical students into convergence science PhDs, to encourage them into future successful cancer research careers. • Build critical mass in clinical cancer research and convergence science within a collaborative and multidisciplinary environment. • Prepare fellows to design and execute practice-changing research projects and provide them with the skills and capabilities to translate their innovations for the benefit of patients. • Provide an outstanding scientific and academic environment including exceptional training, facilities, infrastructure and expertise. • Drive forward initiatives to increase the diversity of individuals pursuing and succeeding in clinical academic careers.

We recognise the major challenges faced by clinical academics after completion of higher degrees.

We have put in place training and support mechanisms to retain trainees in clinical academic careers with funding to support protected research time post-PhD funding, career support, mentoring from senior clinical academics and flexible working options.

Our programme so far has had a number of successes: • Developed and implemented an MB-PhD pathway, learning from Imperial’s existing schemes, tailored to convergence science combining the engineering, physical and data science strengths at Imperial with the strong cancer biology and clinical science at both institutions.

The MB-PhD projects have acted as a catalyst for new ICR and Imperial collaborations. • We have recruited a diverse range of MB-PhD students and CRTFs with approximately a 50/50 gender split.

The ethnicities of our CRTFs are in line with the ethnicities of UK specialist trainees in the NHS. • CRTFs have been recruited from a range of specialities relevant to cancer, including surgery, public health, histopathology and surgery, as well clinical and medical oncology. • Significant interest in both pathways from supervisors and students and therefore have successfully filled all studentships. • Our first students on both pathways are due to complete in summer 2023, with some already obtaining funding to support their ongoing academic clinical development. • Students from the programme have produced various notable outputs.

Our programme will continue to equip clinical academics for the challenges of 21st century cancer research through a consolidated training pathway in research and cancer care that spans from medical school to completion of specialist training and independent research fellowship application to ensure that as many candidates as possible will succeed and become future clinical academic leaders.