Job description and selection criteria:
Job title / Senior Clinical Researcher in Sarcoma andHonorary Consultant Medical Oncologist
Division / Medical Sciences.
Department / Oxford Molecular Pathology Institute, Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, in collaboration with the Oxford Cancer and Haematology Centre and Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences.
Location / Cancer and Haematology Centre, Churchill Hospital, the Botnar Institute and Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Oxford and the Sir William Dunn School, Oxford
Grade and salary / Senior Clinical Researcher with new Honorary Consultant Contract E82.10
Hours / 6 PAs
Contract type / 60% WTE, Fixed term, until December 2016 in the first instance.
Reporting to / Professor Bass Hassan.
Vacancy reference
Additional information / Interviews planned in July. Start position in August 2012
Introduction:
The University
The University of Oxford is a complex and stimulating organisation, which enjoys an international reputation as a world-class centre of excellence in research and teaching. It employs over 10,000 staff and has a student population of over 21,000.
Most staff are directly appointed and managed by one of the University’s 130 departments or other units within a highly devolved operational structure - this includes 5,900 ‘academic-related’ staff (postgraduate research, computing, senior library, and administrative staff) and 2,820 ‘support’ staff (including clerical, library, technical, and manual staff). There are also over 1,600 academic staff (professors, readers, lecturers), whose appointments are in the main overseen by a combination of broader divisional and local faculty board/departmental structures. Academics are generally all also employed by one of the 38 constituent colleges of the University as well as by the central University itself.
Our annual income in 2009/10 was £879.8m. Oxford is one of Europe's most innovative and entrepreneurial universities: income from external research contracts exceeds £367m p.a., and more than 60 spin-off companies have been created.
For more information please visit www.ox.ac.uk
Medical Sciences Division
The Medical Sciences Division is an internationally recognized centre of excellence for biomedical and clinical research and teaching. We are the largest academic division in the University of Oxford.
World-leading programmes, housed in state-of-the-art facilities, cover the full range of scientific endeavour from the molecule to the population. With our NHS partners we also foster the highest possible standards in patient care.
For more information please visit: http://www.ox.ac.uk/divisions/medical_sciences.html
Sir William Dunn School of Pathology
The Sir William Dunn School of Pathology is a Department within the University of Oxford Medical Sciences Division.It has an extensive research programme covering a wide range of fields including, bacteriology and virology, cell biology, immunology, microbiology and molecular biology. It is involved in the teaching of medical sciences to undergraduates.
The Dunn School is famous for pioneering work on penicillin, which brought in the antibiotic era, and other key findings noted in its brief history. The department was rated as the highest scoring UK biomedical research department in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.
As part of the integration of translational cancer research across the University, this post and at least three others form part of an expanding team of sarcoma directed translational researchers. In addition to this post, a new clinical trial development officer, a next generation sequencing scientist, an information technology researcher and translational biologist will be appointed to develop clinical trials that incorporate new technologies that help select patients for the appropriate treatment in clinical trials, and to monitor the effectiveness of those treatments immediately in the tumour and in the longer term. The exciting new development of the Oxford Sarcoma Research Initiative will be directed by Professor Bass Hassan and will be based in the Botnar Institute as part of the joint Musculoskeletal Biomedical Research Unit at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre and Oncology theme of the Oxford Biomedical Research Centre. Prof Hassan runs both a basic research laboratory at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, and is the Consultant Medical Oncologist in the Department of Oncology for sarcoma. A Sarcoma tissue biobank and associated database is being further developed and links with a new integrated trials unit to be based in the Botnar extension currently being built on this site. As the integrated trials unit includes oncology, it is likely the post will locate there once the facility is ready. For more information please visit the website for the Cancer theme of the University (http://www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/research/themes/cancer), Oxford Sarcoma Service (http://www.oxfordsarcoma.co.uk/), Gray Insitute for Radiation and Cancer Biology (http://www.rob.ox.ac.uk/ ) and the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology (http://www.path.ox.ac.uk/).
Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences
NDORMS is a rapidly growing University department of orthopaedic surgeons, rheumatologists, and scientists, working in the field of musculoskeletal disorders. The department makes a significant contribution to the teaching of orthopaedic surgery and trauma to clinical students as well as to postgraduate teaching in musculoskeletal sciences. Our research portfolio ranges from laboratory science and engineering studies through to translational studies that lead to improvements in the care of people suffering from problems such as arthritis, osteoporosis and back pain.
As part of the NIHR Biomedical Research Unit award, the portfolio of research is now expanding to include musculoskeletal malignancy with Sarcoma. As a result, the Oxford Sarcoma Research Initiative is a newly emerging group of translational researchers based in the departments Botnar Institute. The co-ordinating office links research across the University, from bioinformatics at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, basic research at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, to translational clinical trials in the Department of Oncology and Oxford Cancer and Haematology Centre.
For more information please visit: http://www.oncology.ox.ac.uk and http://www.ndorms.ox.ac.uk/index.php
Further information can also be found on Professor Bass Hassan’s lab website: http://users.path.ox.ac.uk/~bhassan/
Job description:
Research topic / Senior Clinical Research Fellow, Honorary ConsultantMedical Oncologist in Sarcoma, TYA and Clinical Trials
Principal Investigator / supervisor / Professor Bass Hassan
Project team / OxSarc Research Initiative and EuroSarc FP7 Collaboration
Project web site / Under development
http://ec.europa.eu/research/health/medical-research/cancer/fp7-projects/eurosarc_en.html
Funding partner / EuroSarc EU FP7 Grant 2011-2016
Oxford University NHS Trust
Oxford Biomedical Research Centre
Recent publications
Technical skills / Investigator initiated early phase translational clinical trials and academic medical oncology, both focused on sarcoma.
Overview of the role
Primary bone tumours are rare cancers that frequently affect children and young adolescents. Despite advances in understanding and therapy significant numbers of patients still die. EuroBoNet [http://www.eurobonet.eu/ ] was an EU funded Framework 6 collaboration operating under the overall leadership of Professor Hogendoorn, based in Leiden, The Netherlands. The collaboration built on the shared knowledge and expertise of major European Bone Sarcoma Centres, including Oxford. EuroBoNet developed several integrated translational and pathological research work programmes aimed at improving patient care and survival. These have now been taken forward in a translational and investigator initiated clinical trials network funded by EU FP7 (December 2011 to November 2016) called EuroSarc. An important component of this strategy is to develop a portfolio of detailed translational (phase I/II) protocols for patients with Ewing's sarcoma, Osteosarcoma, Giant Cell tumours of bone and Chondrosarcoma.
The EuroSarc Workpackage and trial development team for bone sarcomas (Ewing and Osteosarcoma) are led by Professor Bass Hassan at the Oxford UK centre. The team is embedded within NDORMS and the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford. We are seeking a Senior Clinical Research Fellow and Honorary Consultant Medical Oncologist to join the team to run the clinical aspects of the clinical trials and to develop further academic translational studies. Post holder will be joining a strong clinical and translational research environment with ease of access to other local groups including the Oxford Clinical Trials Organisation (OCTO) and The Nuffield Department of Medicine Clinical Trials Organisation. They will also be expected to build good working links with the MRC and EORTC trials offices in the longer term.
In the initial phase, the emphasis will be on establishing multi-national Phase I/II trial capacity through EuroSarc centres; finalizing a working consensus on clinical protocols and standard operating procedures, working closely with the trial development post to progress applications for sponsorship and ethics; identifying and resolving any regulatory, logistic and study management issues. Recruitment centres will be established in the EuroSarc centres in Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Scandinavia, France, Spain and the UK. The major emphasis will be integrated early phase trials with a strong translational element that links to research laboratories. This post will take primary responsibility for the efficient running and delivery of data for the first trials in Ewing and Osteosarcoma, including co-ordination of translational assay objectives.
Communication across Europe will be key to the success of the development program. The team expects to work closely with EuroSarc clinicians and scientists and to build excellent links with colleagues in industry. Close collaboration will be established with the EORTC and MRC trials offices both for professional support and to ensure that the protocols are compatible with the EORTC and MRC trials portfolios and the European Commission’s guidance on best practice.
The Senior Research Fellow will be responsible for coordinating the parallel development of two to four phase I/II protocols. The post will work with the members of the Oxford Sarcoma Research Initiative, trials unit and Professor Hassan on a day to day basis. The Fellow will lead on the initiation of clinical protocols. The post holder is expected to access the readily available expert professional support as necessary to ensure that the protocols address issues such as design, regulatory, logistics, data capture and administration effectively. There is a significant requirement to travel widely to EuroSarc Centres and elsewhere within Europe in order to interact effectively with the key collaborators. Like all academic appointments, the post-holder will be expected to make primary contributions to publications, grant submissions and funding applications.
As an integrated part of trial recruitment and patient clinical management, the post-holder will deliver sarcoma clinical services as a Honorary Consultant Medical Oncologist with Professor Hassan in the Oxford Sarcoma Service. This component of the post will require integration with Professor Hassan in outpatient and inpatient (dose intense) chemotherapy management, outpatient consultations, Teenage and Young Adult service, MDT meetings (OxSarc and GIST/Upper GI MDT). As such, the post provides cover arrangements for annual and study leave. Within this framework, it is anticipated the clinical service component to be limited to the equivalent of 50% WTE for both posts combined (this post and Prof Hassan). The research component therefore contributes a major component to the post. The holder will be expected to undergo joint appraisal with the University and NHS as part of continued professional development and accreditation.
We look to appoint an authoritative Senior Research Fellow with a high quality academic background with research training to PhD level, full CCST training accreditation in medical oncology and direct experience in early phase clinical trials, particularly in rare tumours. We expect to appoint an individual who will relish the challenge of helping to build EuroSarc translational trials platform, who is committed to sarcoma patient group and who seeks a longer term academic career. We thus seek to appoint a Fellow with potential to become an academic leader in clinical and translational research in medical oncology of sarcoma, teenage and young adult oncology and clinical trial design. It is expected that the post-holder will develop their academic and clinical research activity towards the eventual appointment to a substantive post.
Excellent communication skills are essential and must include the ability to negotiate solutions with all levels of professionals across a variety of organisations. Protocol development and communications will be conducted in English but fluency in other major EU languages would be a major advantage. The position is part time and a sample job plan is attached but is open to negotiation with Professor Hassan, Head of Department of Oncology and the Clinical Director of Oncology.
Responsibilities/Duties
1. Responsible for developing, recruiting and delivering two to four translational studies. During this first development wave it will be necessary to establish a functional operational model that will facilitate running complex, clinically and scientifically detailed phase 0-II trials involving multiple European Sarcoma Centres.
2. Apply experience and skills in clinical trials that complement the equally important translational elements of the protocol development work programme.
3. Agree project milestones and organise ongoing work accordingly. Will monitor progress and provide regular reports and updates.
4. Liaise closely with the European Clinical Trials Co-ordinator (and members of the five main sites speciality working groups) to establish protocol aims and objectives and to maintain support and momentum.
5. Work to ensure EuroSarc protocols are consistent with applicable EU regulation, and will fit EORTC and MRC trials organisational models. Work with designated protocol authors and reviewers to take the protocols through the approval, monitoring and analysis of data phases.
6. Contribute to the delivery of a Consultant lead service in the Medical Oncology Management of sarcoma in Oxford.
7. Engage with the rest of the team in identifying and resolving any design, statistical issues, drug supply, legal, resource, laboratory, intellectual property, practical or other issues as necessary to ensure the protocols can be completed successfully.
8. Interact directly with research scientists to initiate, manage, deliver and publish research directly relevant to the role.
9. Submit publications, reports and reviews, including grant applications for funding to support the objectives of the OxSarc Research Unit and Department of Oncology.
10. Help to assess the funding and resource implications of the trial protocols and advise on any measures to minimise these.
11. Organise focused working groups that will move trial development forward. It will be important to foster essential working relationships and ensure high quality and prompt delivery of trial data and deliverables.
12. Be an active member of the wider EuroSarc European Team and also contribute to the local clinical research and teaching programme by sharing knowledge and experience with colleagues.