Mr Robert Jones is the SSL for Colorectal Liver Metastases.

Bowel cancer is the second biggest cancer killer in the UK. Around 10,000 people every year are diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer (also known as stage 4 bowel cancer), where the cancer has spread to other organs, most often the liver or lungs. Most people survive bowel cancer when they’re diagnosed early, but unfortunately survival rates drop significantly at this later stage as there are currently less viable treatment options.

This is why it is so important that patients with advanced disease gain access to the liver and lung specialists as part of their ongoing care to give them the best possible chance to extend their life or even reach a cure.

Over the three year appointment, Mr Jones will strive to address the absence of treatment options by championing and developing new clinical trials and driving innovative research in this area.

Thanks to the generous support of AUGIS and Bowel Cancer UK, the national research portfolio in advanced and metastatic colorectal cancer continues to develop in strength and depth.

The surgically driven BNT-122 colorectal cancer vaccine study for patients with advanced disease is a major success story of the SSL initiative. Funded by German biotech giant Biontech, BNT-122 builds on the success of COVID mRNA vaccine technology and infrastructure. It is a randomised study comparing personalised mRNA cancer vaccines against routine observation following standard of care chemotherapy. We now have 14 sites open and have recruited 187 patients across the UK in less than 12 months. These studies have a biomarker-based recruitment strategy, and so involve a wide screening network to identify eligible patients. High levels of clinician and patient engagement are essential to identify the right patients, and this plays to our strengths as a research enthusiastic and engaged surgical group.

Follow-up after cancer surgery remains a controversial area. Work packages on current UK practice, patient prioritisation for surveillance and a meta-analysis of current evidence around surveillance after liver resection for CRLM are complete and in press. Annabel Jones, Samir Pathak, Aran Rees & Ikem Nzenwa all deserve great credit for driving these pieces to completion and displaying perhaps the most underrated skill in research – the ability to remain cool whilst grappling with journal submission portals.  These pieces of work will provide the bedrock for a prospective study design which is being worked up by Harry Spiers, our associate SSL.

Deciding who is likely to benefit from surgery remains a major obstacle for hepatobiliary surgeons. With colleagues from Oslo, we have been successfully awarded a £1.4 million grant from Norwegian Cancer Research to develop our existing research platform into machine learning for prognostication and prediction in metastatic colorectal cancer. We have built a global network of collaborators to contribute data and pathology to what we think is the biggest global biocohort of its type ever assembled. We’re still looking for additional contributors, so if your centre would like to join in drop me a line!

In recognition of the huge strides in the quality and breadth of the UK CRLM research portfolio, this May will see another Advanced Colorectal Cancer Research Update Day. This will be a great opportunity to share findings, disseminate knowledge and further build the UK CRLM research network as well as develop new clinical and translational collaborations. We look forward to seeing many of you there.

If you’re interested in taking part in any of these projects, or have your own ideas or suggestions, please do get in touch at robjones@liv.ac.uk. Enthusiastic beginner or battle-scarred veteran, all are welcome!

June 2024