Dr Alexandra Gilbert

Dr Alex Gilbert

BSc Psychology (2001), MBBS (2006), MRCP (2009), PhD (2016) FRCR (2017)

Associate Professor in Clinical Oncology

Email: a.gilbert@leeds.ac.uk

Alex is an Associate Professor and honorary consultant in Clinical (Radiation) Oncology. Her research expertise is in the use of patient reported outcomes (PROs) in radiation toxicity measurement both in clinical trials and routine practice. She has particular interests in PRO methodology in clinical trials and in the use of PROs to develop predictive biomarkers of radiotherapy toxicity. She is the PRO and toxicity lead on multiple interventional radiotherapy trials including complex multi-centre platform RCTs evaluating novel agents and techniques. She leads two PRO methodological projects funded by the EORTC Quality of Life group, optimising the use of the EORTC Item Library. She also co-leads a workstream for the Horizons 2020 project, EUonQOL, developing a PRO toolkit to evaluate quality of life across Europe.

Background

Prior to studying medicine at Royal Free and University College Medical School, London, Alex completed a BSc in Psychology at University College, London. Since joining the research and clinical teams in Leeds in 2010, she followed a seamless National Institute for Health Research funded clinical academic pathway to complete her training.

Research Interests

Alex’s research interests include:

  • Radiotherapy clinical trials
  • Measurement of patient reported outcomes (PROs) and quality of life
  • Predicting radiotherapy-related toxicity using radiotherapy dose data (normal tissue complication probability modelling)
Papers since 2020

Elhaminia B, Gilbert A, Lilley J, Abdar M, Frangi AF, Scarsbrook A, Appelt A, Gooya A. Toxicity Prediction in Pelvic Radiotherapy Using Multiple Instance Learning and Cascaded Attention Layers. IEEE J Biomed Health Inform. 2023 Jan 23;PP. doi: 10.1109/JBHI.2023.3238825.

 Gilbert A* et al Quality of life outcomes in older patients with early-stage rectal cancer receiving organ preserving treatment using short course, hypofractionated radiotherapy followed by transanal endoscopic microsurgery (TREC): Non-randomised registry of patients unsuitable for total mesorectal excision. Lancet Healthy Longev. 2022 Dec;3(12):e825-e838. doi: 10.1016/S2666-7568(22)00239-2. Epub 2022 Nov 17.

Sodergren SC, Johnson CD, Gilbert A et al. International validation of the EORTC QLQ-ANL27, a field study to test the anal cancer-specific health-related quality of life questionnaire. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2023 Apr 1;115(5):1155-1164. doi: 10.1016/j.ijrobp.2022.11.002. Epub 2022 Nov 17.

Holch P, Absolom KL, Henry AM, Walker K, Gibson A, Hudson E, Rogers Z, Holmes M, Peacock R, Pini S, Gilbert A et al. Online Symptom Monitoring During Pelvic Radiation Therapy: Randomized Pilot Trial of the eRAPID Intervention. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2023 Mar 1;115(3):664-676. doi: 10.1016/j.ijrobp.2022.09.078. Epub 2022 Oct 12.

Brundage M, Crossnohere N, O’Donnell J, Cruz Rivera S, Wilson R, Wu A, Moher D, Kyte D, Reeve, B, Gilbert A, Chen R, Calvert M, Snyder C. Listening to the Patient Voice Adds Value to Cancer Clinical Trials, JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 2022; djac128, https://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/djac128

Theophanous, S., Lønne, PI., Choudhury, A. et al. Development and validation of prognostic models for anal cancer outcomes using distributed learning: protocol for the international multi-centre atomCAT2 study. Diagn Progn Res 6, 14 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41512-022-00128-8

Gilbert A*, Piccinin C*, Velikova G, Groenvold M, Kuliś D, Blazeby J, Bottomley A; Linking the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) Item Library to the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE) (Journal of Clinical Oncology, Published online August 16, 2022)

Theophanous S, Samuel R, Lilley J, Henry A, Sebag-Montefiore D, Gilbert A*, Appelt AL*. Prognostic factors for patients with anal cancer treated with conformal radiotherapy—a systematic review BMC Cancer 22(1) 607; 2022

 Adusumilli, P., Elsayed, N., Theophanous, S., Samuel, R., Cooper, R., Casanova, N., Tolan, D. J., Gilbert, A*. and Scarsbrook, A. F*. Combined PET-CT and MRI for response evaluation in patients with squamous cell anal carcinoma treated with curative-intent chemoradiotherapy. Eur Radiol 2022.

Hudson EM, Noutch S, Brown S, et al. A Phase II trial of Higher RadiOtherapy Dose In The Eradication of early rectal cancer (APHRODITE): protocol for a multicentre, open-label randomised controlled trial. BMJ Open 2022; 12(4): e049119

Project and Module Development Committee. EORTC QLG Module Development Guidelines (online 2021; https://qol.eortc.org/manual/the-module-development-guidelines-2021/).

Bird D, Nix MG, McCallum H, et al. The benefit of MR-only radiotherapy treatment planning for anal and rectal cancers: A planning study. J Appl Clin Med Phys 2021; 22(11): 41-53.

Snyder C, Gilbert A, Moher D, et al. Recommendations for including or reviewing patient reported outcome endpoints in grant applications. BMJ 2021; 373: n1367

Fokas, E.*, Appelt, A.*, Glynne-Jones, R., Beets, G., Perez, R., Garcia-Aguilar, J., Rullier, E., Joshua Smith, J., Marijnen, C., Peters, F. P., van der Valk, M., Beets-Tan, R., Myint, A. S., Gerard, J. P., Bach, S. P., Ghadimi, M., Hofheinz, R. D., Bujko, K., Gani, C., Haustermans, K., Minsky, B. D., Ludmir, E., West, N. P., Gambacorta, M. A., Valentini, V., Buyse, M., Renehan, A. G., Gilbert, A*., Sebag-Montefiore, D*. and Rodel, C*. International consensus recommendations on key outcome measures for organ preservation after (chemo)radiotherapy in patients with rectal cancer. Nat Rev Clin Oncol 2021; 18(12): 805-16. *joint authorship

Choudhury, A., Theophanous, S., Lonne, P. I., Samuel, R., Guren, M. G., Berbee, M., Brown, P., Lilley, J., van Soest, J., Dekker, A., Gilbert, A., Malinen, E., Wee, L. and Appelt, A. L. Predicting outcomes in anal cancer patients using multi-centre data and distributed learning – A proof-of-concept study. Radiotherapy and oncology : journal of the European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology 2021; 159: 183-9.

Hanna, C. R., Slevin, F., Appelt, A., Beavon, M., Adams, R., Arthur, C., Beasley, M., Duffton, A., Gilbert, A., Gollins, S., Harrison, M., Hawkins, M. A., Laws, K., O’Cathail, S., Porcu, P., Robinson, M., Sebag-Montefiore, D., Teo, M., Teoh, S., and Muirhead, R. (2020) Intensity modulated radiotherapy for rectal cancer in the UK in 2020. Clinical Oncology, (Accepted for Publication)

Bird, D et al Multicentre, deep learning, synthetic-CT generation for ano-rectal MR-only radiotherapy treatment planning. Radiotherapy and Oncology. 2021, 156, (23-28). Published online Dec 2020 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.radonc.2020.11.027

Bach S, Gilbert A et al Transanal endoscopic microsurgery (TEM) and Radiotherapy in Early rectal Cancer (TREC): randomized, feasibility study comparing radical surgery versus short course radiotherapy and TEM. Lancet Gastro and Hep. Dec 2020

Walls et al. CONCORDE: A phase I platform study of novel agents in combination with conventional radiotherapy in non-small-cell lung cancer. Clinical and Translational Radiation Oncology, Volume 25, November 2020, Pages 61-66

Jones H, Gilbert D, Gilbert A, Jacobs C, Muirhead R. DPD testing in radical chemoradiation for anal squamous cell carcinoma? DPD testing in radical chemoradiation for anal squamous cell carcinoma?” to Annals of Oncology. July 2020

Gilbert A, Drinkwater K, McParland L, Adams R, Glynne-Jones R, Harrison M, et al. UK national cohort of anal cancer treated with intensity-modulated radiotherapy: One-year oncological and patient-reported outcomes. Eur J Cancer. 2020;128:7-16.

PhD supervision and teaching

Alex is the main supervisor for a clinical academic NIHR Doctoral Research Fellow. She has co-supervised two PhD students through to successful completion and regularly acts as an internal and external PhD examiner. She is also an educational supervisor for an academic clinical fellow.

In addition, she is an examiner for mock FRCR part 2 examinations in Leeds; teaching on regional FRCR Part 2 course; and contributor to RCR national trainee teaching programmes. Alex is an OSCE examiner for year 4 and 5 medical students and teaches on the Gateway to Medicine teaching course.

Professional Activities
  • Active member of EORTC Quality of Life Group and elected member of the Project and Module Development committee
  • Steering Committee member of the international PRO consortium, PROTEUS