Current research projects
We partner with leading clinicians, institutions and academics across the UK. You can find out more about current research projects below.
Dr Alex Greenhough
University of the West of England
Dr Greenhough and his collaborators are investigating ways to improve how well chemoradiotherapy treatment works for patients with rectal cancer.
Dr Annie Baker
Institute of Cancer Research, London
Dr Baker is looking to predict which patient with inflammatory bowel disease can safely only have part of their bowel removed when precancerous changes are seen.
Dr Christina Dobson
Newcastle University
Dr Dobson is looking at which people who visit their GP with possible bowel cancer symptoms are less likely to return a Faecal Immunochemical Test, and why.
Dr Claire Palles
University of Birmingham
Dr Palles and team will look in detail at the genes of younger bowel cancer patients to help better identify people at higher risk of the disease in the future.
Professor David Jayne
University of Leeds
Professor Jayne is the first surgical research Chair to be appointed as part of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS Eng) Surgical Trials Initiative. His work will drive forward surgical clinical trial research for bowel cancer.
Professor Eva Morris
University of Oxford
Professor Morris and her team will look at data from hospitals in England to identify cases where bowel cancers went undetected during a colonoscopy.
Dr Evropi Theodoratou and Dr Alessandro Rufini
Universities of Edinburgh and Leicester
Drs Theodoratou and Rufini are investigating whether it’s possible to find DNA from cancer cells in poo samples. If successful, this technique could potentially be used to improve bowel cancer screening and diagnosis.
Professor Joanne Edwards
University of Glasgow
Professor Edwards and her team are looking at the changes cancers go through when they spread to other organs.
Professor Lesley Smith
University of Hull
The number of people from the South Asian community that take part in bowel cancer screening in the UK is low, at around 30%. Professor Smith, along with colleagues at Oxford Brookes University and Liverpool John Moores, will investigate reasons why uptake is low and begin to develop a new project that encourages more people to take part in screening.
Professor Mohammad Ilyas
University of Nottingham
Professor Ilyas, in collaboration with colleagues from the Universities of Leeds, Birmingham and Edinburgh, will compare bowel cancer samples from younger people with samples from people aged over 50. They want to see if there are differences that might affect how quickly a tumour grows.
Professor Nathalie Juge
Quadram Institute Bioscience, Norwich
Professor Juge is investigating if a new blood test could be used, alongside the Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT), to detect bowel cancer more accurately.
Where our researchers are
We're proud to have researchers from a range of institutions across the UK working on bowel cancer research as part of our vision of a future where nobody dies of bowel cancer. Have a look at this map to see the different institutions involved.
