Prof. Ruth Plummer is the Chairperson of CDDF Board of Directors
Ruth Plummer is a Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine in the Translational and Clinical Research Institute, Newcastle University, and an honorary consultant medical oncologist in Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Prof. Plummer is director of the Sir Bobby Robson Cancer Trials Research Centre within the Northern Centre for Cancer Care. She leads the Newcastle Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre and the CRUK Newcastle Cancer Centre. She is deputy director of the Newcastle University Centre for Cancer.
Having trained at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, Prof. Plummer obtained a medical degree and science PhD before moving back home to Newcastle and settling with her family in Northumberland. Her research interests are 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.
Nationally, she chaired the Cancer Research UK New Agents Committee from 2012-2019 and is CRUK Clinical Research Committee member. She is also a member of the MRC Precision Medicine Group, National Institute for Health and Care Research Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (NIHR EME) Programme Board, and National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Strategy Advisory Group. She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2018.