Ruth Plummer is Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine at the Northern Institute for Cancer Research, Newcastle University and an honorary consultant medical oncologist in Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She is Director of the Sir Bobby Robson Cancer Trials Research Centre within the Northern Centre for Cancer Care, which is a dedicated clinical trials unit based within the regional cancer centre. She leads the Newcastle Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre and also the CRUK Newcastle Cancer Centre. She trained at Cambridge and Oxford Universities obtaining both a medical degree and scientific PhD before moving back home to Newcastle and settling with her family in Northumberland.
Her clinical practice involves leading on the systemic therapies for skin cancer, with a portfolio of trials across all phases of drug development. In addition she runs a phase I all-comers practice, taking responsibility for one of the most active phase I unit’s in the UK.
Her research interests are in the field of DNA repair and early phase clinical trials of novel agents, taking the first in class PARP inhibitor into the clinic in 2003, ATR inhibitor in 2012 and MCT1 inhibitor in 2014.
This research is either based in the Sir Bobby Robson Cancer Trials Research Centre or in the Northern Institute for Cancer Research of which she is a deputy director. Nationally she chairs the Cancer Research UK New Agents Committee, and sits as a member of Cancer Research UK’s Clinical Research Committee and until recently Science Committee. She is a member of the MRC Stratified Medicine Group.
