UK Bone Cancer Consultants

Mr Robert Ashford is a Consultant Orthopaedic and Musculoskeletal Tumour Surgeon based at The University Hospitals of Leicester.

Mr Ashford graduated from the London Hospital Medical College in 1992.  He undertook basic surgical training in London and East Anglia and he continued his Orthopaedic training in Leicester and Yorkshire.  After passing the FRCS (Tr. & Orth.) in 2004, he completed a one-year fellowship in Sydney, Australia under Dr Paul Stalley, a world-renowned sarcoma surgeon. He completed a further one-year fellowship in lower limb joint reconstruction and tumour surgery at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore.  

He was appointed as a Consultant Orthopaedic and Musculoskeletal Tumour Surgeon at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust and the East Midlands Sarcoma Service in 2007. Mr Ashford has extensive experience in the treatment of a wide variety of hip and knee conditions, bone and soft tissue tumours and trauma. Mr Ashford has published extensively in these fields. He has been awarded an MD for his thesis entitled "Improving the patient journey in breast cancer metastatic to the skeleton" by the University of Sheffield. Mr Ashford is Network Lead Clinician for the East Midlands Sarcoma Service. 

He was selected by the British Orthopaedic Association for the 2014 American-British-Canadian Traveling Fellowship. The ABC Fellowship is a prestigious, highly competitive and sought-after honour awarded to leaders in the field of orthopaedic surgery. ABC Fellows are chosen every two years and travel to various academic institutions in the United States and Canada. They present their research and act as international ambassadors for the BOA as they learn about healthcare and research in their host countries. Mr Ashford is the first Leicester Surgeon to be named an ABC Fellow.

Dr Prem Mahendra is a Consultant Haemato-Oncologist and Divisional Director at the University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust. 

Dr Mahendra trained in Haematology at the Royal Marsden, Hammersmith and Addenbrokkes Hospitals and was appointed Consultant Haemato-Oncologist at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham in February 1998.

On her arrival she set up the bone marrow transplant service. It is now the 2nd largest bone marrow transplant centre in the UK and performs approximately 175 transplants per year.

Dr Mahendra's areas of clinical interests are care of patients with leukaemia, myeloma and lymphoma and those undergoing autologous and allogeneic stem cell transplantation. She has a passionate desire to provide an excellent and prompt clinical service and instils this ethos in the several junior doctors who have trained and continue to train under her. 

Her research interests are all related to clinical outcome of patients undergoing stem cell transplantation or having treatment for haematological malignancies. She has over 80 publications in peer reviewed journals.

Dr Adrian Bloor is a Consultant Haematologist based at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust.

Dr Bloor qualified from Cambridge and University College London Hospital. He has been a consultant at The Christie since 2006 and is lead clinician for lymphoproliferative disorders, the haematology research team, and clinical director of the stem cell transplantation programme and The Christie’s Clinical Trials Coordination Centre.

Dr Bloor is a member of the National Cancer Research Institute chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) trials subgroup, secretary to the executive committee of the UK CLL Forum and a member of the medical advisory panel to the Lymphoma Association. He is also an honorary senior lecturer at the University of Manchester.

Professor John Liu Yin is a Senior Consultant Haematologist and Honorary Professor of Haematology at Manchester Royal Infirmary and The University of Manchester.

Professor Yin graduated from the University of Manchester Medical School in 1975 and trained in Haematology in the Royal Free, North Middlesex and Hammersmith (Royal Postgraduate Medical School) hospitals, London. He was appointed Consultant Haematologist at the Manchester Royal Infirmary in 1985. His clinical interests include leukaemia, myelodysplasia, lymphoma, myeloma and stem cell transplantation.  An international expert in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia and its treatment, he has extensive clinical trial experience and has been principal investigator/coordinator in several UK MRC and NCRI Leukaemia trials.

He was Director of the Bone Marrow Transplant programme in the Manchester Royal Infirmary until 2011 and was previously Chair of the Haematological Oncology Clinical Subgroup of the Greater Manchester and Cheshire Cancer network. He has published over 120 peer reviewed scientific papers, chapters and reviews.

Dr Michael Leahy is a Consultant Medical Oncologist based at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust.

Dr Leahy specialises in the management of patients with sarcoma and testicular cancer.  He graduated from St. George’s Medical School and trained in Oncology at the Royal London Hospital and St Bartholomew’s and then at Christie Hospital, Manchester.  He spent six years at the University of Leeds as Senior Lecturer in Medical Oncology and is now based at The Christie Hospital in Manchester as medical oncologist on the supra-regional sarcoma and testicular cancer multi-disciplinary teams.

He has a particular interest in developing services for teenagers and young adults with cancer and is Clinical Director for the Young Oncology Unit at Christie.

His main research interests are clinical trials in sarcomas.  

Dr Mike Dennis is a Consultant Haematologist based at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester.

Dr Dennis is the Clinical Director of the Haematology and Transplant unit at The Christie.

He qualified in medicine from the University of Dundee in 1991 and completed his physician’s training in Liverpool before undertaking his first haematology post in Australia. Dr Dennis returned to the UK and to his first appointment at The Christie in 1996 before completing his haematology training in Liverpool, including an MD from the University of Liverpool.

He was appointed Consultant Haematologist at The Christie in 2004. In 2013 he was appointed as the Manchester Cancer Pathway Director for Haematological Oncology. He is a member of the British Society for Haematology, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Pathologists and the European group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation.

He is recognised as a national expert on myeloid disease, a member of both the acute myeloid leukaemia and myelodysplasia working groups of the National Cancer Research Network, responsible for the development of clinical trials and trial governance for international multicentre trials in the UK.