Peter Sasieni Overview

Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine
Charterhouse Square
London
EC1M 6BQ
United Kingdom

Email: p.sasieni@qmul.ac.uk

Current research

The department carries out research in both cancer epidemiology and statistical methods. Professor Sasieni and his group have worked together with the National Cervical Screening Programme since 1990 to introduce quality assurance standards and to encourage audit. Their research was the first to estimate the number of cancers prevented by the screening programme and has led to modifications to the age and interval at which women are invited for screening. They are studying whether cervical screening could benefit from tests that detect human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA. Studies have been conducted both in the UK and in Peru because their screening needs are quite different.

The group is interested in evaluating service screening more generally and have evaluated the benefit of colonoscopic screening in individuals with a strong family history of colorectal cancer.

They are also interested in chemoprevention of cancer and are running clinical trials looking at the treatment of early cervical neoplasia (and hence the prevention of cervical cancer) using a food supplement (CRISP-1), and the prevention of endometrial cancer in women with HNPCC using a progesterone-releasing intrauterine device (POET). They are also interested in new statistical methodology particularly in survival analysis and epidemiological methods.

Future projects

Professor Sasieni and the group hope to extend the audit work and will continue to evaluate the role of HPV testing in cervical screening. In the UK they will look at the potential use of self-collected samples and the evaluation of other molecular markers. They hope to continue to set up and run prevention trials.

They have new grants to look at the potential for targeted screening for the early detection of ovarian cancer and for modelling the likely trends in cancer incidence and mortality and the potential for public health interventions and treatments to alter these trends.

They are interested in techniques to adjust for non-compliance in randomised trials and in the design and analysis of studies combining phase II and phase III trials.