Professor Ferdia Gallagher

I am Head of the Department and lead the Clinical Molecular Imaging Group. I am an academic radiologist, Professor of Translational Imaging, and a Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Senior Cancer Research Fellow. 

I studied medicine at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford before training as a radiologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital. During my training, I undertook a PhD in Biochemistry in Cambridge as part of a CRUK Research Training Fellowship and have since been awarded both Clinician Scientist and Senior Research Fellowships from CRUK. 

I hold a number of positions on international committees and scientific advisory boards including Chair of the Publications Committee of the European Society of Radiology and board member of the European Society of Oncological Imaging.  

Project/study information

Our laboratory develops new functional and molecular imaging methods to detect cancer and early response to therapy, with the aim of translating these techniques into humans. The team is especially interested in methods to probe cancer metabolism non-invasively such as clinical hyperpolarised carbon-13 MRI and deuterium metabolic imaging. 

Hyperpolarised MRI is an emerging method to non-invasively assess tissue metabolism using pyruvate as a probe to visualise tumour lactate formation and we are currently studying this technique in human tumours. The group is also interested in the application of MR spectroscopy to study tumour metabolism, as well as other multinuclear and multimodality approaches including PET. 

We are applying these methods to monitor treatment response in a range of settings and are particularly interested in using these novel imaging methods to improve outcome by combining imaging, tissue analysis, and patient data to better phenotype cancer patients and predict their response to therapy.