Dr Avinash Gupta, final year Medical Oncology Registrar and Early Phase Trials Clinical Research Fellow in the Department of Oncology, has been awarded the Association of Cancer Physicians McElwain Prize for 2015 for his work on melanoma.

Dr Gupta was invited to present his work, entitled “Potential drivers of melanoma growth in BRAF wild-type melanoma and use of novel combination regimes in this patient population” at the 2015 National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Conference in Liverpool, as well as at the annual Association of Cancer Physicians Training Weekend in Manchester.

As part of his research Dr Gupta helped develop and deliver DOC-MEK, a national clinical trial sponsored by the University of Oxford, investigating chemotherapy plus MEK inhibitor treatment in BRAF wild-type melanoma, and has led the associated translational research, aimed at identifying novel markers of sensitivity to MEK inhibitor drugs.

The McElwain Prize was established by friends and colleagues of Professor Tim McElwain, to commemorate his extraordinary contribution to the development of Medical Oncology in the UK. Two prizes are awarded annually to UK trainees in Medical Oncology who have performed high quality work on either clinical or basic research related to cancer.