Student Tamsyn Clark awarded the British Association of Surgical Oncology Raven Prize
St Cross student Tamsyn Clark (DPhil Engineering Science, 2018) has been awarded the British Association of Surgical Oncology (BASO) Raven prize for her oral presentation entitled 'Preclinical safety and feasibility of in situ Isolated Normothermic Liver Chemoperfusion (INLiC)' during the 2021 virtual BASO Annual Scientific Conference.
The BASO Raven Prize recognises the best presenting author in the Ronald Raven Prize Session of the BASO Scientific Meeting. The award was first presented in 1973 and with few exceptions has been awarded every year since.
Tamsyn’s research investigates the potential of normothermic machine perfusion to study and enable the targeted delivery of therapeutics to human organs. INLiC involves the surgical isolation of a liver within the patient and its connection to a novel device (OrganOx metra) for perfusing the organ with whole blood to maintain it in an oxygenated and functioning state even whilst disconnected from the body’s blood supply. The research conducted by Tamsyn in a preclinical model demonstrated that it is possible to deliver much higher concentrations of chemotherapy to the organ using this technique than is possible using conventional systemic administration.
Following a period of machine perfusion, the organ was flushed prior to reconnection to the body’s main blood supply, demonstrating that very little of the chemotherapy drug reached non-target tissues such as the heart following INLiC. Subject to successful clinical trials, the technique could have a significant impact on enabling improved efficacy and safety of current and future cancer therapeutics for the treatment of single-organ-confined cancers.
Tamsyn commented on the award:
This is a thrilling step towards using novel organ perfusion technology in the treatment of patients with liver cancers, made possible through a unique clinician-engineer-scientist collaboration.
Our congratulations go to Tamsyn on her well-deserved success!
Image source: Department of Engineering science, University of Oxford
