About Professor Nutting

Cancer Research

I firmly believe that the future of improving outcomes in cancer treatment is through well designed clinical cancer research programmes. During my Intercalated BSc (1989) I worked in the cell biology laboratory and gained experience of cell culture and basic laboratory techniques such as clonogenic cell survival assays. The project studied growth factor and retinoid interactions in bladder cancer cell lines.

Over the last 20 years I have been involved in the evaluation of conformal and Intensity-modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) techniques for a number of tumour sites. During my MD (ICR 1998-2000; Supervisors Prof Webb and Prof Dearnaley) I was able to show the ability of conformal radiotherapy techniques to allow normal-tissue sparing and escalation of radiation dose. I described class solutions for IMRT in the treatment of tumours of the paranasal sinuses, larynx, hypopharynx, thyroid, parotid, oesophagus, prostate and pelvic lymph node irradiation.

Since my appointment at the RMH in 2001 I have developed a number of academic collaborations with colleagues at the ICR in sections of Clinical Trials, Radiotherapy, Joint Department of Physics, MRI research, and Cell and Molecular Biology. I have developed my research areas with clinical trial protocols and radiotherapy technical development concentrating on head and neck cancer.

I was until recently Joint Head of Division of Radiotherapy and Imaging at The Institute for Cancer Research, and am the recipient of multiple research grants totalling over £15M. The main areas of current research are advances in radiotherapy for head and neck cancer, application of imaging to radiotherapy, new chemotherapy drug evaluation and prevention through human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination of boys.