Dr Thomas Drake

Biography

Background

Tom is currently a Surgical Trainee in the South East of Scotland. He is a research fellow within the Usher Institute Centre for Medical Informatics and clinical lecturer at the Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute. His principal research interest is focussed around improving outcomes and experiences for patients who need surgery and have cancer. To do this, he uses large-datasets to look at how cancer can be detected at an early stage and in identifying how specific mutations contribute to cancer growth and therapy resistance.

Summary of Research

  1. Understanding treatment resistance in cancer - Investigating how specific mutations in DNA lead to liver cancer in preclinical models. This work focusses on generating large, multi-omic datasets (genomic, transcriptomic, metabolomic and spatial) to understand the tumour microenvironment in liver cancer and developing ways to test new therapeutic targets through approaches such as in-vivo gene editing.    
  2. Using large datasets to detect cancer early - The most important way to improve cancer outcomes is prevention and early detection. Doing this effectively and quickly is crucial, to maximise the benefits as new technologies and tests develop. These research studies can be complex and require large numbers of participants. As part of the Edinburgh Data Driven Innovation Initiative, datasets from healthcare and administrative data are being linked together to identify who is at the highest risk of developing cancer and provide large, high-quality datasets to evaluate new cancer tests and support efficient clinical trials.    
  3. Research relevant to local and global communities - Working together with local and global communities to make research more useful and representative. This is particularly important in cancer research, where poor outcomes are closely linked with inequalities and deprivation. Locally, working with community healthcare providers and charities to better understand healthcare needs and co-design research. Globally, with the NIHR Unit on Global Surgery (https://www.globalsurgeryunit.org/), a collaborative network undertaking research to improve surgical outcomes after cancer surgery.

Qualifications

  • Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (MRCS), 2024
  • Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Glasgow, 2023 - Cheine Medal (Edinburgh) and Best PhD prize (Glasgow)
  • Bachelors of Medicine and Surgery (MBChB), University of Sheffield, 2016
  • Bachelors of Medical Science (BMedSci), University of Sheffield, 2013

Responsibilities & affiliations

  • Honorary Clinical Lecturer, School of Cancer Sciences, University of Glasgow
  • Course Tutor, HealthyR - R for healthcare data science
  • Academic Surgery Module BMedSci in Surgical Sciences
  • Edinburgh Surgery Online Masters Statistics Tutor
  • Peer review for MRC, ESPRC, STFC, NIHR (HTA, HSDR, RfPB), International Alliance for Cancer Early Detection and Cancer Research UK funding panels
  • Peer review for Lancet family, Annals of Surgery, British Journal of Surgery, British Journal of Cancer, PloS Medicine and HPB journals
  • Editor, Cochrane Collaboration

View all 44 publications on Research Explorer

A full publication list can be found here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=jPThi00AAAAJ

 

This article was published on