Submitted by Catherine Atkins on Thu, 24/10/2024 - 11:05
We are thrilled to report that Prof Antonis Antoniou, Professor of Cancer Risk Prediction in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, has been named as the 2024 of winner of the Don Listwin award for outstanding contribution to early cancer detection.
Announced last night (23rd October) at the Early Detection of Cancer Conference in San Francisco, the award recognises a sustained contribution to, or singular achievement in, the cancer early detection field. The award is named in honour of Don Listwin, founder and chairman of the Canary Foundation, dedicated to research into early cancer detection.
Antonis and team have been recognised for their work on developing risk prediction models for cancer, in particular for breast and ovarian cancers. These models can help doctors to predict who might be most at risk of certain cancers so that preventive and screening measures can be better targeted. The team's CanRisk tool is used in primary care to calculate an individual's future risks of developing breast and ovarian cancers using cancer family history, genetic and other risk factors. Since 2020 over 3 million assessments have been performed using CanRisk.
Antonis said: I am deeply honoured that our work has been selected for the 2024 Don Listwin Award. This award reflects the remarkable dedication and contributions of our team, collaborators, healthcare professionals, patient and public partners, and everyone involved in the multidisciplinary work that underpins CanRisk. Over the years, this work has included developing novel statistical methods for modelling cancer susceptibility, understanding cancer risks for genetically susceptible individuals through large-scale collaborative studies, developing and validating multifactorial risk models, and transforming this research into user-friendly tools for clinicians. This has truly been a team effort.