Mitch Dowsett

Biography

Professor Mitch Dowsett has a long-standing interest in breast cancer. His PhD training was conducted at The Institute of Cancer Research, London on the mechanism of bone breakdown by breast cancer metastases. His interest in biomarkers was also initiated and extended by training in Clinical Biochemistry at St Barts Hospital, London. This placed him in a good position for then managing (from 1980) the steroid biochemistry service at the Chelsea Hospital for Women, a specialist centre for infertility and gynaecology that was adjacent to The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London. Collaboration with the Breast Unit of the The Royal Marsden was initiated immediately with Drs Ian Smith, Adrian Harris, Charles Coombes and Trevor Powles (all long since Professors). He joined The Royal Marsden in 1988 as head of a new Biochemical Endocrinology Team and became Head of the joint Royal Marsden Hospital-ICR Academic Department of Biochemistry in 1990. His chair in Biochemical Endocrinology was awarded by London University in 1994 and he was named Professor of Translational Research in the Breast Cancer Now Breast Cancer Centre in 2004. He is the Theme Leader for Breast Cancer Research for the Biomedical Research Centre for Cancer and leader of the Endocrinology Team in the Breast Cancer Now Breast Cancer Centre. He was awarded the William McGuire Memorial Lectureship in 2007 and has been a Senior Investigator of National Institute of Health Research since 2009.

Research Interest

His main scientific interests have for many years related to the endocrine basis of the majority of breast cancers. This ranges from trying to understand better the importance of hormones as effectors of a variety of epidemiological risk factors (e.g. obesity, early/late childbirth) and their potential for evaluating risk in healthy women, to understanding the mechanisms of response and resistance to oestrogen deprivation in the treatment of breast cancer. As such, he played a central role with in the clinical development of aromatase inhibitors, which are now widely accepted to be the most effective endocrine agents for postmenopausal women. His interest in the pharmacodynamics of endocrine treatment led to the nuclear proliferation marker Ki67, which now has multiple uses in pre-surgical studies, and more generally in the popularity of neoadjuvant therapies for evaluating new drugs. He views the pre-surgical setting as being uniquely informative for the in vivo study of breast cancer biology and new therapeutic strategies.