Sarah Blagden, M.D., Ph.D.

Sarah Blagden is a clinician-scientist (M.D., Ph.D.) at the University of Oxford with a more than 20-year established track record of clinical and laboratory research. She is a board-certified medical oncologist having conducted her specialty training at the University of Cambridge and Royal Marsden Hospitals. From 2006-2015, she was director of early-phase trials at Imperial College London and, from 2017 to 2021, director of the Early Phase Clinical Trials Unit at the University of Oxford. She has considerable experience in designing clinical trials, developing methodologies such as complex innovative designs and considering their regulatory aspects. She has conducted numerous early- and late-phase trials as co-investigator, principal, and chief investor. Sarah is now director of Oxford University’s Oncology Clinical Trials Office (OCTO), which is the UK’s first unit to specialize in Precision-Prevention and Early Detection (PPED) studies. In addition, she leads an RNA biology lab exploring post-transcriptional mechanisms of gene regulation in tumorigenesis. She is a member of CRUK’s Prevention and Population Research Committee.

In this seminar, Sarah describes the OCTO experience of developing a pipeline of precision prevention trials, the principles upon which these trials are based, and the practical challenges they have faced so far.