Biography
Professor Salto-Tellez’s integrated model of research cuts across technologies and cancer types, taking the clinical/diagnostic need as the key research focus. His advocacy and work on digital pathology and morpho-molecular diagnostics across the UK, Europe and the USA has helped to shape modern pathology.
In his early career, Professor Manuel Salto-Tellez held posts at institutions including The National University of Singapore. Currently, he is the Professor of Molecular Pathology at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), Clinical Consultant Pathologist at the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, and Director of the Precision Medicine Centre (PMC) at QUB.
Professor Salto-Tellez was instrumental in establishing PMC at QUB – a new clinical laboratory bringing together high-throughput genomics, digital pathology and big data analytics in a fully integrated fashion. He aims to accelerate the translation of potentially relevant diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic findings into clinically actionable information by applying state-of-the-art technology in a clinical laboratory environment.
Professor Salto-Tellez has created partnerships and collaborations with industry, academia and healthcare organisations that maximise the potential to capitalise on the value of integrated clinical and biomarker information to improve patient outcomes. This has been translated in two UKRI / Innovate UK programmes, totalling more than £11M in competitive resources.
Professor Salto-Tellez also leads a Cancer Research UK Accelerator programme in the area of digital pathology and immuno-oncology, aiming to foster the use of artificial intelligence and digital pathology in cancer research and cancer diagnostics. This programme, focused in genomic medicine and digital pathology, led to the development and use of QuPath, arguably the most successful open source digital pathology programme internationally, and TissueMark®, the best example of ‘conceptualization to commercialization’ of a digital pathology product in the UK. In addition to his research, Professor Salto-Tellez has extensive experience of training PhD, MSc and MSc students.
Professor Salto-Tellez has won numerous awards, including the Erasmus Prize of the European Community (1990), World Scientists Forum International Award in the field of Onco-Cytology from the International Research Promotion Council (2005), and the Silver Frame in recognition of research in the area of gastrointestinal diseases, presented at the 13th Annual Hellenic Helicobacter Pylori Congress, Athens (2008). He received a Courage Star from the Courage Fund in Singapore, in recognition of his work during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crisis that affected primarily the South-east of Asia in 2003.