Join us to celebrate a special milestone for our new professors and hear about their inspiring career journeys. Doors for this event will open at 16.45, with the lectures to commence at 17.00. A drinks reception will be held immediately after the lecture at 18:00.

Registration closes at 12am 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 Andrea Billè

Impact of Leonardo daVinci and robotic surgery in thoracic oncology 

Abstract

Leonardo Da Vinci sketched a Mechanical Knight around 1495 and in 2001 the world’s first robotic lobectomy was done in Pisa. Minimally invasive surgery, 3D planning and 3D printing have substantially improved treatment options for lung cancer. Robotic surgery is now becoming the standard of care for early stage but also for locally advanced lung cancer with reduction in the number of open surgeries performed, less complications with excellent oncological outcomes and better quality of life postoperatively.

Three-dimensional technology recently has also helped us to plan minimally invasive surgery and enabled the printing of rib prostheses which can be used to reconstruct the chest wall in locally advanced tumours invading the chest wall. This helps to preserve the shape of the hemithorax and improve functionality and recovery post-operatively.  

Biography

Andrea Billè is a Consultant Thoracic Surgeon at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and Adjunct Professor of Thoracic Surgery in the School of Cancer & Pharmaceutical Sciences, King’s College London. He qualified in Turin in 2005 and trained in Turin and at Guy’s, then held a consultant post in Milan and a fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. His PhD examined surgery for pleural mesothelioma. Since 2015 he has built the largest robotic thoracic programme in Europe, with more than 1,800 robotic procedures. He was local principal investigator for MARS 2, leads the ESTS mesothelioma registry and the International Drain Registry, sits on the IASLC staging committees for lung cancer, mesothelioma and thymic tumours, and has been involved in research funding since 2021.

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Professor Alan Ramsay

Close Encounters: Cancer and the Immune Synapse

Abstract

Effective immunity depends on close encounters between cells. Cancer can sabotage these connections, weakening the immune system’s ability to recognise and destroy malignant cells.

Professor Ramsay will trace his research journey from discovering how leukaemia and lymphoma disrupt the immune synapse to uncovering how cancer reshapes the lymph node itself. His team showed that fibroblasts, cells normally responsible for organising and supporting immune responses, can be reprogrammed by lymphoma to suppress T-cell function.

He will describe how collaborative studies involving patients, laboratory models and clinical trials are revealing ways to repair immune communication and overcome these barriers. Extending from blood cancers to lung cancer, this work seeks to restore the supportive immune environment and guide more effective immunotherapies, bringing laboratory discoveries closer to better treatments for people living with cancer.

Biography

Alan G. Ramsay is Professor of Cancer Immunology, leading the Lymphoma Immunology research group within the Comprehensive Cancer Centre. He studied Zoology at Glasgow and Molecular Microbiology at Nottingham, completing his Molecular and Cell Biology (Microbiology) PhD at Aberdeen following a research placement in Lausanne, Switzerland.

His Cancer Research UK postdoctoral fellowship at Barts Cancer Institute linked integrin trafficking to carcinoma migration and invasion. He subsequently identified how blood cancers disrupt immune synapses, the specialised contacts through which immune cells recognise and attack targets, and demonstrated their repair with immunomodulatory drugs. Since joining King’s in 2013, his group has revealed how lymphoma reprogrammes lymph node fibroblasts to suppress immunity. His blood and lung cancer research connects laboratory discoveries with clinical trials to improve immunotherapy, alongside teaching, mentoring and patient involvement.