Mieke Van Hemelrijck

Professor in Cancer Epidemiology, King's College London

Professsor Van Hemelrijck studied for an MSc in Biomedical Sciences (2001-2005) and an MSc in Statistical Analysis (2005-2006) at Ghent University, Belgium. While doing so, she became engaged in epidemiology research in the field of urology. She continued her epidemiological training by spending two years at the Harvard School of Public Health (2006-2008), where she obtained an MSc in Population & International Health, staying focused on urological research. From 2008-2010, she worked with Professor Holmberg at King’s College London and obtained a PhD in Cancer Epidemiology. In 2012, she was appointed as a Lecturer in Cancer Epidemiology at King’s College London. She leads the TOUR (Transforming cancer OUtcomes through Research) Team in the School of Cancer & Pharmaceutical Sciences and became a Professor in late 2020.

Professor Rik Bryan 

Director of the Bladder Cancer Research Centre, University of Birmingham and Professor of Urothelial Research

Professor Rik Bryan is a former clinical urologist, and now a full-time bladder cancer research academic. He is the Chief Investigator of the Bladder Cancer Prognosis Programme (BCPP), the SELENIB clinical trial, and POUT-T. He is the Director of the Bladder Cancer Research Centre (BCRC) in the Department of Cancer & Genomic Sciences at the University of Brimingham, leading a multi-disciplinary translational research team. The BCRC has a particular interest in the proteomics, genomics and epigenomics of bladder cancer and related biomarkers, and novel agents, technologies, and pathways.

Dr Mark David Linch, BSc (Hons) MBChB FRCP PhD.

Associate Professor of Oncology & Honorary Consultant Medical Oncologist

Dr Linch is an Associate Professor at University College London (UCL) Cancer Institute, where he leads the Urological Cancer Biology Group, and Honorary Consultant Medical Oncologist. Dr Linch trained in medical oncology at the Royal Marsden Hospital and in 2012 was awarded a PhD in Cancer Cell Biology from Cancer Research UK London Research Institute, now known as the Francis Crick Institute. Since 2014, Dr Linch has been at UCL where he specialises in the clinical management and translational biology of prostate and bladder cancer. His research is focused on the immune biology of these cancers with a view to identifying rational immunotherapy combinations, predictive biomarkers and novel liquid biopsy strategies. He is the Uro-oncology clinical lead for the CRUK-UCL-Cancer Trials Centre, is chief investigator of a number of national and international combination immunotherapy trials in bladder and prostate cancer, was Chair of the UK Prostate Cancer 100,000 genome project group, is an inaugural member of the UK Bladder Cancer Translational Group and is a member of the Prostate Cancer UK Clinical Advisory Group. He is supported by Prostate Cancer UK, Prostate Cancer Foundation, CRUK, the John Black Foundation, Percy Stevens and Sir Peter Wood.

Professor Maria De Santis

Professor for Translational Urologic Oncology

Professor Maria De Santis is a medical oncologist, born, raised and educated in Vienna, Austria. Maria is Professor for Translational GU-Oncology at Charité University Hospital in Berlin, Germany (“Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin”) where she has also been serving as the chair of the Department of Interdisciplinary Genito-Urinary Cancer Medicine since 2018. In addition, she has been appointed Adjunct Professor at the Department of Urology at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, in 2016.

In 2008, Professor De Santis qualified for the Venia Docendi (Privatdozentin) in Medicine at the Paracelsus Medizinische Privatuniversität in Salzburg, Austria, and she has been working clinically as a Senior Consultant at the 3rd Medical Department – Center of Oncology and Hematology- at Kaiser Franz Josef-Spital in Vienna, Austria, for 18 years, where she has also led the GU-Oncology Service for 11 years.

From 2015 until April 2018, she was appointed Associate Clinical Professor for Oncology at the University of Warwick, Coventry, and working clinically in genitourinary oncology at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Cancer Centre in Birmingham, UK.

Professor De Santis is a member of several international scientific committees, including the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO), the European Association of Urology (EAU) and the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC).

She also served as a scientific committee member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology for a 3-year term and has been part of the ESMO GU prostate and non-prostate faculty panels for several terms. She has authored multiple peer-reviewed articles in genito-urinary cancer medicine. In addition, Professor De Santis is a panel member of the ESMO bladder cancer guidelines group and the EAU prostate cancer guidelines panel as well as the German guidelines group for bladder cancer (S3 Leitlinie). Her main research interests include prostate, renal and bladder cancer.

Allen Knight

Action Bladder Cancer Trustee

Allen was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2010, aged 49, having never smoked or worked with industrial chemicals. He was lucky in that it hadn't gone too far, and he was successfully treated. But it returned after 9 months, and he is still under surveillance.

Although he had trained as a rocket scientist, Allen had set up and run a management consultancy business for nearly 20 years. It is these skills and a passion to improve bladder cancer diagnosis and treatment that he brings to ABC UK.

As well as being a Trustee and past Chair of ABC UK, Allen is also a patient representative on a number of bladder cancer clinical trials, a Bladder Cancer Research Centre Advisory Board Member, a past board member for the National Institute for Health Research and a patient expert for NICE. In his spare time Allen loves to fly light aircraft, walk and travel.

Professor Jenny Rohn

Professorial Research Fellow

Professor Jennifer Rohn is Head of the Centre for Urological Biology in the Department of Renal Medicine in the Division of Medicine at University College London. Jenny runs a research laboratory studying diseases of the urinary tract, including bladder infection and bladder cancer, using human microtissue model systems. Her team works in collaboration with engineers and clinicians to find new cures for these disorders. Jenny earned her PhD in Microbiology from the University of Washington, Seattle USA. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute and a group leader position in a start-up biotech company in the Netherlands, she re-joined academia at University College London in 2006 with a Wellcome fellowship and was promoted to Professor in 2021.

Dr Simon Baker

Kidney Research UK Fellow at the University of York

Simon obtained his PhD in 2007 and works on the origins of bladder cancer in the “Jack Birch Unit for Molecular Carcinogenesis” at the University of York. His work focuses on the control of the APOBEC family of anti-viral enzymes that are thought to cause the DNA damage that initiates bladder cancer.

Dr Douglas G Ward PhD

Theme Lead - Biomarkers & Proteomics

Doug Ward is a Senior Research Fellow leading the laboratory research into biomarkers at the BCRC. His group’s research spans all aspects of tissue and liquid biopsy biomarkers - from initial candidate discovery though to validation and translation into clinical use.

Doug spent the early part of his career using biophysical techniques to investigate protein structure and function. This led to an interest in mass spectrometry-based proteomics which evolved into utilising proteomic technologies to study bladder cancer, and the resultant identification of prognostic protein biomarkers. Next generation sequencing has now become a key technology for DNA and RNA-based biomarker research and his group have recently developed and validated a test based on targeted sequencing of urine DNA for the non-invasive detection of bladder cancer.

Professor Jenny Southgate

Professor of Molecular Carcinogenesis, Director of the Jack Birch Unit & York Biomedical Research Institute theme lead for Molecular and Cellular Medicine.

Jenny Southgate began her career at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) in London and has a PhD in epithelial cancer cell biology. She led the Biology of Normal and Malignant Epithelial Cells group based at the ICRF Cancer Medicine Research Unit in Leeds, before moving to the University of York as Director of the Jack Birch Unit, supported by York Against Cancer. Her main research interest focuses on human urothelium where she uses cell and tissue engineering approaches to explore how normal urothelial tissue homeostasis (differentiation versus regeneration) is usurped to drive subtype development in cancer.

Professor Simon Crabb

Professor of Experimental Cancer Therapeutics.

Simon Crabb is a Professor of Experimental Cancer Therapeutics at the University of Southampton and an Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology at University Hospital Southampton, with a large practice in urological malignancies, including bladder cancer. His research interests focus on novel treatment strategies for cancer, including precision medicine approaches for bladder cancer. Simon is the Associate Clinical Director of Southampton Clinical Trials Unit and Clinical Programme Lead for Southampton Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre. Other roles have included membership of the NCRI Bladder and Renal Group, Chair of the Genomics England Clinical Interpretation Partnership for Bladder Cancer, Trustee of the British Uro-oncology Group and Associate Editor for the British Journal of Cancer. He is the Chief/co-Chief Investigator for the GUSTO and AURORA trials.

Professor Steven Joniau

Associate Professor of Urology, Catholic University of Leuven,
Senior Clinical Researcher, Research Foundation Flanders (FWO)
Head of Clinic, Dept. of Urology, University Hospitals Leuven

Prof. Steven Joniau is a distinguished urologist with a profound expertise in the management of prostate and bladder cancer. His clinical and academic career, spanning more than two decades, is marked by a dedication to advancing both minimally invasive and open uro-oncological surgery, as well as a multidisciplinary approach to pelvic cancers. He obtained his PhD in Medical Sciences in 2012, with a focus on high-risk localized prostate cancer, and has since led numerous pioneering research initiatives at University Hospitals Leuven. His research interests encompass lymph node staging, biomarker development, and drug innovations in high-risk prostate and bladder cancer.

In addition to his clinical and research endeavors, Prof. Joniau is a highly respected figure in the academic and scientific community. He is the founder and honorary chairman of Scientific Summits, a non-profit organization dedicated to oncologic urology education, and the founder and chairman of the Belgian Genito-Urinary School (BeGUS). He also serves as vice-chairman of the European Multicenter Prostate Cancer Clinical and Translational Research Group (EMPaCT) and is a board member of the European Association of Urology’s (EAU) Section of Oncologic Urology (ESOU). He is the chairman-elect of the Belgische Vereniging voor Urologie (BVU).

Prof. Joniau's contributions to the field have been recognized with numerous prestigious awards, including the Crystal Matula Award and the Orion International Oncology Award. He has authored and co-authored over 440 peer-reviewed publications, several book chapters, and has been an invited faculty member at more than 200 international congresses. His academic leadership extends to editorial roles in several leading journals, and he remains a driving force in advancing research and clinical practice in uro-oncology on a global scale.

Professor Jim Catto

Professor of Urological Surgery at the University of Sheffield

Jim is NIHR Research Professor, Professor of Surgery at the University of Sheffield and holds an honorary posts at the University of Oxford. He was Editor in Chief of European Urology until 2023 (2023 Impact factor: 25).

He has authored over 400 articles, has over 45,000 Scopus citations, an H-index of 94 and has raised over £34M in funding.

Twitter (X):  @jimcatto