The department comprises four paediatric oncology consultants (Dr Denise Williams, Dr James Nicholson, Dr Amos Burke and Dr Boo Messahel), one academic paediatric oncology consultant (Dr Matthew Murray), one paediatric haematology consultant (Dr Mike Gattens), one paediatric palliative care consultant (Dr Pat Sartori) and one associate specialist (Dr Anny Wong).
The team provide tertiary level services to the population of the East of England. The service operates a ‘hub and spoke’ model of care in association with 12 district general hospitals around the region. The paediatric haematology and oncology team is truly multidisciplinary and requires vital inputs from many individuals to allow the delivery of high quality patient care as part of clinical research trials. This team includes specialist nurses, the research team (responsible for registration, data management and input, reporting of serious adverse events etc for clinical trials), allied healthcare professionals (physiotherapy, speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, audiologists), teachers, CLIC Sargent social workers, counsellors and clerical staff.
The clinical research activity of the team is exceptionally strong, with patients actively recruited to a portfolio of national and international haematology and oncology trials. Dr Amos Burke is the clinical trials lead for paediatric haematology and oncology at Addenbrooke’s. Our centre has recently been accepted to recruit patients onto the ‘Innovative Therapies for Children with Cancer’ Phase I and Phase II haematology and oncology studies, joining nine other centres in the United Kingdom.
Members of the department also chair and have key roles in national and international groups and research networks (e.g. NIHR Cancer Research Network) responsible for the development of new trials and guidelines, and for providing the infrastructure that allows high-quality clinical research to take place in the NHS for patient benefit. Members of the department are also engaged in a variety of nationally and internationally recognised translational laboratory research projects in collaboration with other departments within the University of Cambridge and beyond. This includes malignant germ cell tumours (Dr James Nicholson and Dr Matthew Murray), lymphoid malignancies (Dr Amos Burke) and Wilms’ tumours (Dr Boo Messahel).
