Leading cancer researcher to receive honor from the Queen

Professor Jack Cuzick from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) will be appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), as published today in the Queen's New Year 2017 Honours List.

The appointment, which has been recommended to the Queen by the Prime Minister, is in recognition of his achievements in cancer research, particularly the use of preventive medicine in cancer.

Professor Jack Cuzick, Director of QMUL's Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine and Head of the Centre for Cancer Prevention, said: "It is a great honour to be recommended for such a prestigious appointment. This is particularly important for the recognition it provides of the need to develop preventive therapies to tackle cancer before it occurs, much as now is done for heart disease.

"An enormous amount of research has been carried out which has provided clear evidence of the benefits of acting early to identify those at risk of cancer and prevent the onset of the disease with appropriate medication, rather than offering treatments when it may be too late."

The CBE comes just months after Professor Cuzick's election as a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Professor Cuzick was the first to show that the drug tamoxifen was highly effective in the prevention of breast cancer, and subsequently demonstrated the superior efficacy and safety of aromatase inhibitor drugs, which can reduce breast cancer incidence by over 50 per cent. He also developed a widely used model for assessing breast cancer risk.

The discovery that the human papilloma virus (HPV) was the cause of cervical cancer prompted Professor Cuzick to use HPV DNA testing as an alternative to the conventional Pap smear test. HPV testing has now become the primary screening method in many places. In collaboration with others, he also showed that a type of HPV vaccine can virtually eliminate cervical cancer, and will lead to a much reduced need for screening.

Professor Cuzick also developed a method to identify a larger group of prostate cancer patients that can be safely managed by active surveillance than was previously possible, thus avoiding the morbidity associated with surgery or radiation therapy.

Provided by Queen Mary, University of London