Professor Simon Buczacki
Professor Simon Buczacki, Richard Blackwell Pharsalia Professor of Colorectal Surgery at NDS, has been awarded a CRUK Discovery Programme Foundation Award for his project titled 'Stem cell signatures of mutational order in colorectal cancer.'
The award, valued at £1.55 million over six years, will support research aimed at delineating the order of mutations in cancer stem cell populations and how these influence their identity and subsequent tumour responses to therapy in colorectal cancer. The work will involve generating colorectal tumour organoids and co-culturing them with other cell types to better reflect the patient tumour environment.
Professor Buczacki said: ‘We’re humbled to have been awarded a CRUK Programme Foundation Award to further progress our work on mutational order in cancer.’
Dr Alex Gordon-Weeks
Dr Alex Gordon-Weeks, Consultant Hepatobiliary Surgeon and Clinical Lecturer at NDS, has been granted a CRUK Discovery Programme Award for his project titled 'Defining mechanisms of T cell dysfunction in liver metastases of colorectal cancer.'
This five-year award, worth £1.66 million, allocates around £650,000 directly to NDS. The project is a collaboration with Professor Leonard Seymour, who serves as the lead investigator, and Associate Professor Kerry Fisher from the Department of Oncology. Together, the team will explore how immune cells—specifically T cells—become impaired within liver metastases of colorectal cancer, with the goal of identifying strategies to restore their function.
View the full list of 2024 - 2025 CRUK Discovery Programme Award recipients