Sarah Blagden
Oncologist
I qualified as a doctor in the early 90s and was immediately shocked by the harsh treatments that cancer patients had to endure and the impact this had on their families. I wanted to do more to help so I specialised in cancer (oncology) and spent time in research, trying to understand how our cells are changed by cancer. I came to the University of Oxford a decade ago where I set up a research laboratory continuing this work and, with my doctor’s hat on, designed and ran clinical trials to test new cancer treatments in patients. But too often we were left thinking “if only their cancer had been picked up sooner”. This led me to pivot towards preventing cancer. Amazingly, many colleagues were having similar thoughts and we formed a coalition, joined by members of the general public, with the collective ambition of preventing cancer. This included the Oxford Vaccine teams who have shared their know-how with us so we can develop cancer preventive vaccines. It surprised me to learn quite how many people go about their daily lives knowing they are at very high risk of developing cancer and yet they are sometimes excluded from entering clinical trials because their risk is too high. We decided to turn this on its head, making them the focus both of our research and our clinical trials. We now have one study running and two opening soon that will be testing new cancer preventive treatments. This has become a massive team effort, each of us acting as links in a chain joining ideas coming from the brains of our scientists all the way to delivering treatment to our patients.
Talks by Professor Sarah Blagden, available to watch on YouTube:
Precision Prevention Trials For Cancer Susceptibility Syndromes
