UCL Institute for Women's Health (IfWH)

Department of Women’s Cancer

Head of Department: Professor Martin Widschwendter (m.widschwendter@ucl.ac.uk)

'Working for women, working against cancer'
Formerly known as the Gynaecological Cancer Department, The Department of Women’s Cancer is renown both nationally and internationally for its research programme in breast and gynaecological malignancies which spans 20 years. It was originally established by Professor Jacobs in 1994 at Barts and the London, QMUL and moved to University College London in 2004. Professor Martin Widschwendter joined the department in 2005 and became Head of Department in 2011. He has brought a wealth of clinical and scientific expertise, attained throughout his 20 year career working in leading medical and academic institutions worldwide, to the department.

The department forms part of the Institute for Women’s Health at UCL and has strong links with UCLH and collaborators both nationally and internationally. Our fundamental aim is to prevent the development of women specific cancers by developing new and improved clinical tools of risk prediction and screening. We also invest a wealth of scientific and clinical expertise to discover ways of early detecting and improving the treatment of women specific cancers.

Our key strengths are:

• Close integration of clinical and basic science expertise
• Large clinical trials with their associated biobanks
• State of art facilities and expertise for molecular, epigenetic, proteomic studies
• Over £30 million in research funding from the MRC, Department of Health, CR UK and The Eve Appeal.