Fellow

Nick Lemoine is Director of the Institute of Cancer and the CRUK Clinical Centre, Barts & the London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry. He is a ‘molecular pathologist’, and has been a strong champion of the use of molecular genetic changes in tissues for diagnosis, and more recently the exploitation of these changes as potential targets for gene therapy. He was among the first to show the importance of ras activation in the progression of thyroid cancer, and these studies led onto work on its significance in pancreatic cancer. He has made a major contribution to our understanding of the molecular changes which accompany pancreatic carcinogenesis. While pancreatic cancer is a relatively common cause of death from GI cancers, its study is rendered difficult through problems in the acquisition of tissue. However, Nick Lemoine has been able to profile the molecular changes in pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia, being the first investigator to show activation of k-ras and loss of p53 in this condition and in pancreatic cancer itself. His work has also drawn attention to other important players inlcuding TIMP1, MMP7, CC59 and Notch 4. He has also made important observations on more basic aspects of cell survival, including the identification of novel isoforms of BH3 domain proteins which activate Bax in the cell death pathway, and has made extensive use of the DNA fingerprinting method to investigate the clonality of multiple hepatocellular carcinomas. However, it is his work in the translational field of molecular oncology for which he is probably best known. His lab has been much involved in the characterisation of the HER2 receptor, and it was an innovation when he reported the results of a phase 1 study in the use of transcriptionally-targeted therapy. He is now developing a range of new oncolytic viruses for gene therapy and is at the forefront of this methodology and cancer gene therapy in general.