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Background and Research Interests

Fiona has been Director of the Wolfson Institute of Population Health (WIPH), one of six Institutes at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL)’s Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, since 2021. The WIPH has six centres of excellence, one of which, the Centre for Cancer Screening, Prevention & Diagnosis, has Fiona as a senior member. This Centre deliver world-class research focusing on developing and evaluating new approaches to all aspects of prevention, early detection and diagnostics with a focus on primary care and low-resource settings. Until March 2021 she led the Cancer group in the University of Cambridge’s Primary Care Unit in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care.

Fiona has won research grants totalling more than £35 million in the UK and AU$10 million in Australia, and published over 260 peer reviewed articles including in Nature, Lancet, BMJ and JAMA. She co-led the CRUK- funded CanTest Collaborative (2016-22), and now co-leads the CRUK-funded CanDetect programme, accelerating detection of upper gastro-intestinal cancers using multi-cancer early detection platforms in primary care. She is also co-investigator on the £5m NIHR Policy Research Unit in Cancer Awareness, Screening and Early Diagnosis. UK research leadership roles include deputy-Chair for Cancer Research UK’s Early Detection and Diagnosis committee, and recent co-Chair of the 2023 CRUK Early Detection of Cancer conference.

Fiona also co-leads research in South Africa and Zimbabwe, including an NIHR Global Research Group ‘Advancing Early Diagnosis of Cancer across Southern Africa’, and contributes to research in Europe (Denmark, the Netherlands) and the US. Her international work is marked by an honorary academic role at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her educational and capacity building work is marked by the setting up and delivery of the annual CanTest International School for Cancer Detection Research in Primary Care and the AWACAN-ED Southern African School for Cancer Research.

Selected Publications

  1. A. Aggarwal, A. Choudhury, N. Fernhead, P. Kearns, A. Kirby, M. Lawler, S. Quinlan, C. Palmieri, T. Roques, R. Simcock, FM Walter, P. Price, R. Sullivan. The future of cancer care in the UK-time for a radical and sustainable National Cancer Plan. Lancet Oncol 2023  DOI: 10.1016/S1470-2045(23)00511-9
  2. Zhou Y, H Singh, W Hamilton, S Archer, S Tan, J Brimicombe, G Lyratzopoulos, FM Walter. Improving the diagnostic process for patients with possible bladder and kidney cancer: a mixed-methods study to identify potential missed diagnostic opportunities. Br J Gen Pract 2023; 73(733):e575-e585
  3. Funston G, Moullet M, Mounce L, Lyratzopoulos G, Walter FM, Zhou Y. Pre-diagnostic prescription patterns in bladder and renal cancer: a longitudinal linked data study. Br J Gen Pract 2023; BJGP.2023.0122
  4. Funston G, Hamilton W, Abel GAA, Crosbie EJ, Rous B, Walter FM. The diagnostic performance of CA125 for the detection of ovarian and non-ovarian cancer in primary care: A population-based cohort study. PLoS Med 2020; 17(10):e1003295. DOI:  10.1371/journal.pmed.1003295
  5. Freeman K, Dinnes J, Chuchu N, Takwoingi Y, Bayliss SE, Matin RN, Jain A, Walter FM, Williams HC, Deeks, JJ. Algorithm based smartphone apps to assess risk of skin cancer in adults: systematic review of diagnostic accuracy studies. Brit Med J, 2020 Feb 10;368:m127. DOI:  10.1136/bmj.m127
  6. Walter FM, Thompson MJ, Wellwood I, Abel GA, Hamilton W, Johnson M, Lyratzopoulos G, Messenger M, Neal R, Rubin G, Singh H, Spencer A, Sutton S, Vedsted P, Emery JD. Evaluating diagnostic strategies for early detection of cancer in primary care: the CanTest framework. BMC Cancer, 2019;19:586. DOI:  10.1186/s12885-019-5746-6
  7. Lee A, Mavaddat N, Wilcox AN, Cunningham A, Carver T, Hartley S, Babb de Villiers C, Izquierdo A,  Simard J, Schmidt MK,  Walter FM, Garcia-Closas M, Tischkowitz M, Pharoah P, Easton DF, Antoniou AC. BOADICEA: a comprehensive breast cancer risk prediction model incorporating genetic and non-genetic risk factors. Genet Med, 2019 Aug;21(8):1708-1718. Published online 2019 Feb 18. DOI:  10.1038/s41436-018-0406-9
  8. Rubin G, Walter FM, Emery J, de Wit N. Re-imagining the diagnostic pathway for gastro-intestinal cancer. Nature Reviews Gastro Hepat, 2018;15(3):181-188. DOI:  10.1038/nrgastro.2018.1
  9. Usher-Smith JA, Kassianos A, Emery JD, Abel GA, Teoh Z, Hall S, Neal RD, Murchie P, Walter FM. Identifying people at higher risk of melanoma across the UK: a primary care based electronic survey. Brit J Dermatol, 2017;176(4):939-948. DOI:  10.1111/bjd.15181
  10. Walter FM, Mills K, Mendonca S, Abel G, Basu B, Carroll N, Hamilton W, Rubin GP, Emery JD. Symptoms and patient factors associated with diagnostic intervals for pancreatic cancer (SYMPTOM pancreatic study): a prospective cohort study. Lancet Gastroenterol, 2016;1(4):298-306. DOI:  10.1016/S2468-1253(16)30079-6
  11. Rubin G, Berendsen A, Crawford SM, Walter FM, et al. The expanding role of primary care in cancer control. Lancet Oncol 2015. doi: 10.1016/S1470-2045(15)00205-3

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