My Breakthrough
We recruit our first clinician scientist
New clinician scientist Anthony Kong, who joins the team at the Breakthrough Research Centre, will be researching tailored treatments for breast cancer.
We are thrilled to announce that Breakthrough’s first clinician scientist, Dr Anthony Kong, will soon be starting his programme of research to investigate Herceptin and other targeted therapies in breast cancer. Anthony will be funded by the new Breakthrough Breast Cancer Clinical Researcher Programme, and generously supported by a donation from the Holbeck Charitable Trust. He is delighted to have this opportunity, saying: “I’m very honoured to be Breakthrough’s first clinician scientist funded through this scheme. It’s great to be backed by a charity whose vision is the same as my own.”
Anthony has nearly completed five years of specialist training as an oncologist (a doctor specialising in the treatment of cancer). During this time, he has treated patients with many different types of cancer. Impressively, he has also trained in scientific research, successfully completing a PhD at Cancer Research UK. During this time he studied targeted cancer therapies, including Herceptin, a treatment for breast cancer. He is now keen to continue and develop this research alongside his work as a clinician. He explains his motivations: “Although extremely challenging, I discovered that breast cancer is a fascinating field of research, and one in which we’re making incredible progress. Additionally, I meet with breast cancer patients all the time, and I would love to help improve the way we can treat them.”
The purpose of Breakthrough’s Clinical Researcher Programme is to give outstanding and committed medical doctors the opportunity to carry out scientific research in addition to their clinical work in hospitals. Breakthrough recognises that individuals like Dr Anthony Kong hold enormous potential for making all-important connections between medicine and science.
"Because Breakthrough has a reputation for funding world-class research, and is entirely focused on breast cancer, it makes it easy to speak to appropriate people to get the support you need. "
Dr Anthony Kong
Anthony is uniquely positioned to identify problems faced by breast cancer patients that could be solved using laboratory research. He explains: “Unless we combine both science and medicine, it’ll be very difficult to achieve our aim of improving treatment for breast cancer patients. Often, when discoveries are made in the laboratory, they take a long time to get through to the doctors in our hospitals. By becoming a Breakthrough clinician scientist, I hope to bridge the gap between the laboratory and the hospital, particularly in the field of targeted therapies for breast cancer.”
Today, targeted therapies like Herceptin and Avastin are becoming more commonly used to treat breast cancer. And in the next 10-20 years, we can expect to see more and more scientific research translated into targeted treatments for patients. Because of this, it will become increasingly important for doctors to accurately identify those patients who will benefit from each new treatment, and those who will not. It is this pressing issue that Anthony Kong plans to address through his research.
At the moment, breast cancer patients are tested to see whether they might benefit from the drug Herceptin. Anthony is working on developing a new, more sensitive, test which he hopes will predict with greater accuracy whether a patient is likely to be helped by this treatment. He thinks this test will also be useful in the future for predicting whether patients would benefit from other targeted treatments that may become available.
This is vital work. It is important to remember that all treatments have side effects, so doctors want to avoid giving people treatments that won’t benefit them. This is why it is so essential for doctors to be able to precisely match each individual patient with the treatment most likely to be effective for them. Anthony’s research findings should help equip them to do just this.
Unfortunately, even if a patient initially responds well to a particular treatment, they may go on to develop resistance to it. Drug resistance is a major, but poorly understood problem, affecting thousands of women every year. Anthony also wants to find out how drug resistance to targeted therapies develops, and what can be done to tackle the problem.
Breakthrough strongly encourages collaboration between its scientists, and with other scientists around the world. This ensures that information gained through different approaches is shared, speeding up the pace of research. Dr Anthony Kong knows that collaboration will be central to the success of his project. He will be working with Professor Mitch Dowsett at Breakthrough’s Research Centre in London, and with three other research teams, two located in London and one in Oxford. Anthony says:
“Because Breakthrough has a reputation for funding world-class research, and is entirely focused on breast cancer, it makes it easy to speak to appropriate people to get the support you need. It’s important to be able to share ideas and expertise with other scientists working on similar problems.”
Anthony is clearly very highly motivated, and completely committed to his aim of improving the treatment options open to his patients. We wish him all the best as he embarks on his ambitious research programme, and hope that he will be one of many Breakthrough clinician scientists to come.
We are immensely grateful to the Holbeck Charitable Trust for supporting Anthony's Fellowship over the next three years.
