In this episode, we speak to Professor Caroline Dive, Professor of Cancer Pharmacology at The University of Manchester, Interim Director of the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute and Director of the CRUK Cancer Biomarker Centre, about cancer biomarkers in lung cancer, focussing on:

• Establishing a Cancer Biomarker Centre in Manchester
• Developing liquid biopsies such as circulating tumour cells (CTCs), circulating free DNA (cfDNA) and circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA)
• The future of integrating novel biomarkers into the clinic

Show notes:

About the CRUK MI Cancer Biomarker Centre: https://www.cruk.manchester.ac.uk/Our-Research/Cancer-Biomarker-Centre

Professor Caroline Dive’s research profile: https://www.crukcentre.manchester.ac.uk/team-members/caroline-dive/

cfDNA methylome profiling for detection and subtyping of small cell lung cancers: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43018-022-00415-9

The evolution of lung cancer and impact of subclonal selection in TRACERx: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=3CNlPIMAAAAJ&sortby=pubdate&citation_for_view=3CNlPIMAAAAJ:e84hm74t-eoC

Pulmonary venous circulating tumour cell dissemination before tumour resection and disease relapse: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6986897/

Speaker profile:

Upon completing her PhD studies in Cambridge, Professor Caroline Dive moved to Aston University’s School of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Birmingham where she established her own group studying mechanisms of drug-induced tumour cell death, before moving to The University of Manchester to continue this research. Caroline was awarded a Lister Institute of Preventative Medicine Research Fellowship before joining the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute (CRUK MI) in 2003.

Currently, she is Interim Director of the Institute and Director of its Cancer Biomarker Centre, with research spanning tumour biology, biomarker discovery and preclinical pharmacology alongside regulated laboratories for biomarker assay validation and qualification within clinical trials to Good Clinical Practice standards supporting clinical decision-making.

Caroline was awarded the Pasteur-Weizmann/Servier International Prize in 2012 for her Biomarker Research, the AstraZeneca Prize for Women in Pharmacology in 2016 and was presented with the 2019 Heine H. Hansen Lectureship Award by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC). In 2018, Caroline was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for her services to cancer research. Most recently, she became an elected member of EMBO (2020), received the inaugural Johann Anton Merck Award in recognition for exceptional contributions to the field of preclinical oncology (2020) and was the recipient of the Mary J. Matthews Pathology/Translational Distinguished Service Award by IASLC (2021). Caroline was President of the European Association for Cancer Research from 2020 – 2022.