Dr Haley Whitaker

Dr. Hayley Whitaker’s translational work takes basic science discoveries from the bench to the bedside. Her work is focused on the early detection of cancer and predicting poor outcome and is predominantly in the field of prostate cancer. Hayley began her career doing a PhD with Professor Charlotte Bevan on the androgen receptor in prostate cancer at Imperial College London. From here Hayley moved to Cambridge to pursue a post-doctoral post in Professor David Neal’s laboratory on the basic biology of prostate cancer. She set up her own team in 2011 identifying and validating cancer biomarkers a wide of cancers, including prostate. This biomarker initiative focused on routine, high quality validation of membrane and secreted biomarkers in tissue and biological fluids to a level that was suitable for rapid translation into clinical practice. Hayley also played a key role in the International Cancer Genome Consortium prostate cancer project. In 2015 Hayley and her group moved to University College London where they work on combining prostate biomarkers with MRI imaging and developing therapeutic targets. She works closely with a multidisciplinary translational team including clinicians, radiologists, pathologist, engineers, computational biologists to understand the molecular basis of cancer and how this can be exploited for diagnosis and therapy.