The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust London, United Kingdom
Head, Ralph Lauren Centre for Breast Cancer Research Breast Unit Director, Clinical Research Director, The Royal Marsden and Institute of Cancer Research NIHR Biomedical Research Centre
Improving prediction of the risk of recurrence of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer.
Estrogen receptor-(ER) positive breast cancer is the most common subtype of breast cancer, affecting approximately 70 percent of all people diagnosed. Many hormone therapies have been developed to target the ER in the cancer cells and are given for localized, early-stage cancers in conjunction with surgery and often radiation. With these treatments, most patients are cured but some will recur. The patients who are at risk of recurrence despite hormone therapies and surgery, are often offered chemotherapy to improve the chances of cure. Current gene expression tests such as the Oncotype DX Breast Recurrence Score®, Prosigna® Breast Cancer Prognostic Gene Signature Assay, and EndoPredict® Breast Cancer Prognostic Test used to predict the risk of recurrence, measure global gene expression in the tumor—usually from a sample of thousands to millions of cancer cells. However, some cancers recur even though the test predicts low risk, and many patients with high-risk test results don’t have a recurrence. Dr. Turner aims to improve the prediction of risk of recurrence and seeks to better understand the biology of what causes a cancer to recur.
Dr. Turner and his team will use new technology that allows them to analyze individual cells in tumors and determine whether all the cancer’s cells are the same or whether there are aggressive cells hiding among otherwise treatable cancer cells. They will then look at how cancer cells interact with normal tissue cells to gain insight into what causes ER-positive breast cancer to return after initial treatment.
Nicholas Turner, MD, PhD, FRCP, FMedSci is a Consultant Medical Oncologist who specializes in the treatment of breast cancer. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University before obtaining his degree from the University of Oxford Medical School. After completing general medical training in London, he pursued studies in medical oncology at Royal Free and University College Hospitals and completed a PhD degree at The Institute of Cancer Research in 2006. He joined the Breast Unit of The Royal Marsden as a Consultant in Medical Oncology in 2008 and was elected a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2021.
He is the Director of The Royal Marsden and ICR NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, and Director of Clinical Research at The Royal Marsden and ICR as well as Head of the Ralph Lauren Centre for Breast Cancer Research and Group Leader in Molecular Oncology at the Breast Cancer Now Research Centre at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR). He has been awarded multiple prizes for his research including the AACR Outstanding Investigator Award for Breast Cancer Research in 2017, the AACR Team Science Award in 2022, the Pezcoller Foundation – EACR Translational Cancer Researcher Award in 2022, the ESMO award for Translational Research in 2023, and the Queen’s Anniversary Prize 2024.
Professor Turner has co-chaired the ASCO/CAP and chaired the ESMO review committees on circulating tumor DNA analysis in patients with cancer. He sits on the organizing committees of many international conferences on breast cancer, was the executive chair of the IMPAKT 2015 breast cancer conference, chair of the ESMO Breast Cancer 2025 conference, and is a scientific editor of the journal Cancer Discovery. He is Chief Investigator of a number of national and international trials of precision therapy in breast cancer and his research interests include the development of new therapies for breast cancer and using liquid biopsies to deliver more precise treatment for breast cancer.
2024
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