There are 3 central themes to Dr Ring’s research:
1. Cancer care disparities and care of older patients with cancer
The focus of this research has been ensuring that individuals with cancer at risk of undertreatment (older patients and those with social deprivation/other health problems) have best possible outcomes. Dr Ring and has team have led research into the needs of older patients with cancer.
This includes collaborations with Professor Lynda Wyld (University of Sheffield) as part of the NIHR Bridging the Age Gap project. One of Dr Ring’s MD students, Dr Nicolo Battisti, has been heavily involved in analysis of the data from this study. The team also collaborate with Dr David Adlam (University of Leicester) as part of the VICORI study.
This is a CRUK/British Heart Foundation funded cardio-oncology programme: Dr Battisti and Dr Jasmin Waterhouse (MD student) have been involved in conducting analyses and publishing data from this programme.
2. Aspirin studies and survivorship
The Add-Aspirin is a phase III double-blind randomized trial assessing the addition of aspirin after standard primary therapy in nearly 10,000 patients with early-stage common solid tumours. This study is investigating whether aspirin reduces the risks of cancer recurrence, and also impacts on cardiovascular and other non-cancer outcomes. Dr Ring is lead of the breast cancer cohort, which completed recruitment of 4266 patients and will report its primary analysis in 2026.
In the meantime, Dr Ring’s MD student Dr Jasmin Waterhouse, has been involved in analysing exercise and cardiovascular data in trial participants. These data regarding survivorship issues are supplemented by data from routine clinical practice at the Royal Marsden.
3. Clinical breast cancer studies
Dr Ring is UK lead or joint lead for a number of national and international breast cancer studies, including the PALLAS, Compleement-1, ESTHER, POETIC A and PlasmaMATCH studies. PlasmaMATCH is a multiple parallel cohort, non-randomised, open-label, multi-centre phase IIa clinical trial aiming to provide proof of principle efficacy for designated targeted therapies in patients with advanced breast cancer where the diagnostic targetable mutation is identified through circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) screening.
Dr Ring was co-ordinating investigator and lead of Cohort E (investigating Celarasertib and Olaparib) working with Professor Nicolas Turner (ICR Chief Investigator) and the team at the ICR-CTSU.