Staff Profile

Present Appointment

• CRUK/MRC funded Clinical Research Associate in Cancer Imaging

• PhD Supervisors: Professor Herbie Newell, Dr Ross Maxwell and Professor Ruth Plummer

Previous Appointment

• Specialist Registrar in Clinical Oncology, Northern Centre for Cancer Care, Freeman Hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne

Degrees

• MB ChB Aberdeen 2001

• MRCP Edinburgh 2004

• FRCR London 2011

Memberships

• NCRI Bladder and Renal CSG (Trainee member since 2014)

Research Interests

• Novel PET and magnetic resonance imaging techniques to personalise treatments for oncology patients

• Integration of biological tumour data from PET/MRI (e.g. proliferation, hypoxia, glucose metabolism) with anatomical information from routine CT/MRI for early response assessment and radiotherapy planning

Clinical Trials

• F-18 Fluoro-L-Thymidine PET for assessment of treatment response in Exocrine Carcinoma of the Pancreas (Collaboration with Imperial College)

• FLAIRE: Using 18F-FLT PET CT to Assess response on Imaging to Radiotherapy and guide future dose Escalation to resistant areas in the radiotherapy treatment of locally advanced oropharyngeal cancer: a pilot study

• MARBLE: Exploring the use of Functional MRI to Assess early Response to neo-adjuvant chemotherapy in muscle invasive BLaddEr cancer (incorporating an 18 F- FLT PET sub study)

• THRIFT: THyRoid Cancer IMRT Planning Using 18F FluoroThymidine PET CT: a pilot study

Grant Funding

• MRC Confidence in Concept 2014-2015: Optimising FLT-PET CT scanning with thymidine phosphorylase

• Organised a one-day workshop on Imaging in Stratified Cancer Treatment – Methodology, Pre-clinical Discovery and Clinical Trials at Newcastle University, November 2013, with Professor Herbie Newell and Dr Ross Maxwell.  Meeting was attended by 60 UK delegates, primarily young investigators. 

• Martinez RC, Sathasivam HP, Cosway B, Paleri V, Fellows S, Adams J, Kennedy M, Pearson R, Long A, Sloan P, Robinson M. Clinicopathological features of squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity and oropharynx in young patients. British Journal of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery 2018, 56(4), 332-337.
• Barnes A, Alonzi R, Blackledge M, Charles-Edwards G, Collins DJ, Cook G, Coutts G, Goh V, Graves M, Kelly C, Koh D-M, McCallum H, Miquel ME, O'Connor J, Padhani A, Pearson R, Priest A, Rockall A, Stirling J, Taylor S, Tunariu N, van der Meulen J, Walls D, Winfield J, Punwani S. Guidelines & recommendations: UK quantitative WB-DWI technical workgroup: Consensus meeting recommendations on optimisation, quality control, processing and analysis of quantitative whole-body diffusion-weighted imaging for cancer. British Journal of Radiology 2018, 91(1081), 20170577.
• Pearson RA, Thelwall PE, Snell J, McKenna J, Pieniazek P, Fitzgerald EL, Heer R, McMenemin RM, Pedley ID, Azzabi AS, Newell H, Maxwell RJ, Plummer ER, Frew JA. Evaluation of early response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in muscle-invasive bladder cancer using dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI and diffusion weighted MRI: MARBLE study. In: 2016 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium. 2016, San Francisco: American Society of Clinical Oncology.
• Pearson RA, Thelwall PE, Snell J, McKenna J, Pieniazek P, Fitzgerald E, Heer R, McMenemin RM, Pedley ID, Azzabi A, Maxwell RJ, Newell DR, Plummer ER, Frew JA. Evaluation of early responses to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in muscle-invasive bladder cancer using a dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI and diffusion-weighted MRI: MARBLE study. In: Genitourinary Cancers Symposium 2016. 2016, San Francisco, California: Journal of Clinical Oncology.
• Panebianco V, Barchetti F, de Haas RJ, Pearson RA, Kennish SJ, Giannarini G, Catto JWF. Improving Staging in Bladder Cancer: The Increasing Role of Multiparametric Magnetic Resonance Imaging. European Urology Focus 2016, 2(2), 113-121.
• Challapalli A, Barwick T, Pearson RA, Merchant S, Mauri F, Howell EC, Sumpter K, Maxwell RJ, Aboagye EO, Sharma R. 3 '-Deoxy-3 '-¹⁸F-fluorothymidine positron emission tomography as an early predictor of disease progression in patients with advanced and metastatic pancreatic cancer. European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2015, 42(6), 831-840.
• Goranov BB, Drew Y, Graham J, Iqbal MS, Kagzi M, Mahtab N, Pearson R, Smith E, Mulvenna P. Academic opportunities within clinical oncology training. Clinical Oncology 2013, 25(7), 446-446.
• Pearson R, Brown R, Robinson M, Kelly C, Chatterjee S. Correlation of HPV Status to Treatment Outcomes Post Radiotherapy in Tonsillar Carcinoma: a UK Regional Centre Experience [abstract]. Clinical Oncology 2011, 23(3), S23-S23.
• Pearson RA, Bannister-Young RH, Ivison D, Kelly CG, Chatterjee S. Split-course Hypofractionated Palliative Radiotherapy for Patients with Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma - a Worthwhile Treatment Schedule in the UK?. CLINICAL ONCOLOGY 2010, 22(10), 890-891.