Justin Stebbing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Justin Stebbing is a British clinician-scientist specialising in oncology and cancer research. He is a professor of biomedical sciences at Anglia Ruskin University[1] and practices with the private sector Phoenix Hospital Group in London.[2]
Stebbing is co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Oncogene.[3] He is also a visiting professor of cancer medicine and oncology at Imperial College London.[4]
Stebbing graduated from Trinity College, Oxford.[citation needed] After completion of junior doctor positions in Oxford, he trained on the residency programme at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in the US, returning to London to continue his career at The Royal Marsden and then St Bartholomew's Hospitals. His PhD research investigated the interplay between the immune system and cancer including the role of viruses.[5][6] In 2007, he was appointed a senior lecturer, and then in 2009 a full professor, at Imperial College London.[7] In 2011, the National Institute for Health and Care Research awarded Stebbing its first Translational Professorship in Oncology, working on overcoming treatment resistance and targeted precision medicine approaches.[8]
Research career
Stebbing has published over 700 peer-reviewed papers[9] and has an h-index of 90 according to Google Scholar.[10]
Cancer research
Stebbing was an oncology professor at Imperial College London[11] and has gained a reputation for innovative treatments.[12]
He is co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Oncogene.[13]
The charity Action Against Cancer was set up to support Stebbing's work.[14][failed verification]
Stebbing's research in cancer has included work on the molecular biology of solid tumours. His group identified LMTK3 as an oncogene and therapeutic target in breast cancer.[15] The team characterised the network of microRNAs induced by the estrogen receptor.[16]
Stebbing has also worked on cancers caused by HIV and AIDS, including investigating immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome in patients with Kaposi's Sarcoma.[17]
He has undertaken extensive work on biosimilars,[18][failed verification] cheaper versions of expensive biologic drugs designed to democratise access to these.[19]
COVID-19
During the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, Stebbing used artificial intelligence to identify baricitinib as a potential drug treatment.[20][21] He led studies that showed that the drug reduced mortality in COVID-19 hospitalised patients with pneumonia, which led to the drug being authorised by the US Food and Drug Administration in October 2020 as an Emergency Use Authorization at first in combination with remdesivir, then alone.[22] Stebbing wrote a book, Witness to COVID, 2020, describing its discovery, trials, studies and approval.[23]
Stebbing is part of a team that ran a phase 1/2 clinical trial using invariant natural killer T cells as an 'off-the-shelf' therapy in ventilated patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), the first time these cells have been used in the clinic.[24][25]
Other research
Stebbing has worked on neurological therapies for patients with unmet medical needs who are treatment resistant or unresponsive to other existing medications.[26]