UCL Cancer Institute

Since 2014 Hilary Calvert has been an Emeritus Professor of Cancer Therapeutics in the UCL Cancer Institute at University College London.

He was appointed in 2009 to a new post, the Director of Anticancer Drug Discovery and Development and Professor of Cancer Therapeutics at University College London. He is based in the UCL Cancer Institute where his role is to foster a clinical program of new drug trials in cancer and drug discovery initiatives within UCL and Partners.  His training is in Medicine, Mathematics and Biochemistry.

He has had a long involvement in anticancer drug development starting while he was working at the Institute for Cancer Research / Royal Marsden Hospital in London (1977 – 1989).  He was responsible for the introduction of carboplatin into clinical practice, the development of a dosing formula based on its pharmacokinetics and its subsequent clinical development in ovarian cancer.  He led the group developing folate-based inhibitors of thymidylate synthase, leading to the licensing of Tomudexä (raltitrexed) by AstraZeneca.  The consequent interest generated in this of drugs class lead to the development of pemetrexed (Alimtaä) by Eli Lilly.

In 1989 he moved to the University of Newcastle and implemented a program of drug development, aimed at using the molecular pathology of human cancers to define targets, developing drugs aimed at those targets, and performing preclinical and early clinical trials.  The first drug to emerge, an inhibitor of poly-(ADP-ribose) polymerase was the “first in class” and is currently undergoing clinical development by Clovis (rucaparib).  Of particular interest is the potential for drugs of this class in the treatment of BRCA1 or BRCA2 related breast and ovarian cancers.

He also established a Clinical Trials program, with up to 8 Phase I studies of anticancer drugs open at a time, and has personal interest in ovarian cancer and mesothelioma. The activity of pemetrexed in combination with carboplatin in mesothelioma was first demonstrated in Newcastle.

He an author on over 240 scientific papers, many concerning drug development and is a co-editor of the Handbook of  Drug Development (Lippincot, Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore, 2003).

In 2005 he was awarded the Pfizer Research Innovation Award – an award made annually within Europe but encompassing all areas of science – for his work on developing new anticancer drugs. In 2009 he was the recipient of the British Oncological Association / Pfizer Lifetime Achievement Award; in 2010 he received the European Society of Medical Oncology Lifetime Achievement Award; in 2012 was a co-recipient of the CR UK Team Award for his work on PARP inhibitors and in 2015 he gave the Targeted Anticancer Therapies honorary award lecture.