Join us on Wednesday 7 October for the Inaugural Lecture of Professor Sheila Singh.

As a new member of our Faculty, Professor Singh will deliver a lecture to showcase her inspiring career journey and research.

Doors for this event will be open from 16.45, with the lecture commencing at 17.00. A drinks reception will be held immediately after the lecture at approximately 17.45.

Registration closes at 12 am on the Sunday before the lecture, as King’s Venues require a list of all attendees, particularly those external to King’s 48 hours in advance of the event.

 If you are a member of staff wishing to attend after registration has closed, please just email communicationsunit@kcl.ac.uk to let us know.

Professor Sheila Singh

The evolution of brain tumour initiating cells: Chasing a moving target

Abstract

Professor Singh was educated in Canada by scientists and clinicians who made seminal breakthrough discoveries in stem cell biology. She applied principles of stem and neurodevelopmental biology to the study of brain cancer, and with her PhD supervisor Dr Peter Dirks, first described a rare population of cancer stem cells that drive brain tumour recurrence, called brain tumour initiating cells (BTICs). BTICs possess unique abilities to evade standard chemo and radiotherapy, and thus escape therapy to drive recurrent, treatment-refractory brain cancer.

At the same time, she became a pediatric neurosurgeon and in treating children with resistant brain cancer, she imagined the discovery of more selective and personalised therapies that spare normal neural stem cells in a growing child, but specifically target the self-renewal mechanisms of currently treatment-resistant cancer stem cells.

She will describe the translational pipeline built by a large team of scientists to uncover novel targets in treatment-resistant brain cancer, design novel and selective small-molecule and immunotherapies against these targets, and move these discoveries into preclinical and clinical testing for brain cancer patients. Ultimately, the mechanistic understanding of how cancer stem cells evolve through space, time and therapy will inform the development of new and more effective therapeutics, giving new hope to brain cancer patients with currently incurable disease.

Biography

Professor Sheila Singh was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and trained in neurobiology and molecular genetics (McGill University) and medicine (McMaster University). Her PhD thesis, undertaken at the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children during her neurosurgery residency training, first described the novel identification of brain cancer stem cells.

She served as Professor and Head of Neurosurgery at McMaster University, a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, Pediatric Neurosurgeon and Founding Director of the Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research.

She is now Joint Head of the School of Cancer & Pharmaceutical Sciences and Director of the Comprehensive Cancer Centre at King’s College London, Professor of Neuro-oncology and Neurosurgery, an honorary consultant neurosurgeon at King’s College Hospital, and a senior strategic advisor to Evelina London Children’s Hospital, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. She has published over 200 manuscripts in journals such as Nature, Nature Medicine, Cancer Cell, Cell Stem Cell, Cancer Research, PNAS and many others; she has 28,792 citations, and her h-index is 94.