Ruth Plummer


Ruth Plummer FMedSci is a Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine at Newcastle University and an oncologist specialising in treating patients with melanoma. Based in Newcastle, she directs the Sir Bobby Robson Cancer Trials Research Centre, set up by the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation to run early-stage clinical trials.
Plummer wrote the first prescription in the world of a type of drug called a PARP inhibitor in 2003. Rucaparib was licensed to treat some women with advanced ovarian cancer in the EU in 2018 and the US in 2016. Plummer and the Newcastle team won a Translational Cancer Research Prize from Cancer Research UK for this work in 2010. Ruth was elected as a fellow of the UK's Academy of Medical Sciences in 2018.

Education

Plummer studied pre-clinical medicine at the University of Cambridge and completed a PhD and her clinical studies at the University of Oxford.

Career and research

She then moved back to Newcastle, working at the Northern Institute for Cancer Research at Newcastle University. She lists her research interests as DNA repair and the early trials of new drugs.
Plummer is Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine at the Northern Institute for Cancer Research, Newcastle University and an honorary consultant medical oncologist in Newcastle Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. She is Director of the Sir Bobby Robson Cancer Trials Research Centre within the Northern Centre for Cancer Care, which is a dedicated clinical trials unit based within the regional cancer centre. The centre celebrated its 10th anniversary in February 2019 by inviting patients who had been treated at the centre back for a party. Plummer also leads the Newcastle Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre and also the CRUK Newcastle Cancer Centre.
Plummer was the first clinician to write a prescription for a cancer drug called a PARP inhibitor in 2003. She led early clinical trials testing the safety of a combination of rucaparib and temozolomide in patients with advanced solid tumours, discovering that the combo was well tolerated and learning more about how the drug works. Plummer has also led early-stage trials testing rucaparib in combination with chemotherapy for advanced solid tumours, finding it safe to combine rucaparib with the chemotherapy drug carboplatin. Following successful clinical trials, Rucaparib was given accelerated approval in the US by the FDA in 2016 and received a conditional licence by the EU in 2018.
Plummer has also led studies bringing a new type of drug, called an ATR inhibitor, into the clinic through early-stage clinical trials. ATR, which stands for Ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3 related, regulates how cells respond to stress and can help promote DNA repair. Many cancer cells rely on ATR to survive.
As well as her clinical practice and research, Plummer sits on a number of scientific committees. She chairs the Cancer Research UK New Agents Committee and the Scientific Advisory Board for Target Ovarian Cancer. She is a member of Cancer Research UK’s Clinical Research Committee and the Medical Research Council’s Stratified Medicines Group. Plummer also sits on the clinical advisory board for Karus Therapeutics, and is a scientific advisor for CV6 Therapeutics.

Awards and honours

Plummer was invited to become a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2018 for her “outstanding contribution to experimental cancer medicine." The Academy of Medical Sciences cited upon election that Plummer “has a world-leading reputation in the design and delivery of early phase clinical trials. She has taken many new cancer drugs into the clinic to determine their optimal dose, which have then become standard treatments with proven patient benefit.”
Plummer won a Translational Cancer Research Prize from Cancer Research UK for this work in 2010 for her work on PARP inhibitor trials. She was presented with the STEM award at the North East Women Entrepreneur of the Year Awards in 2015. The award recognised some of the region’s top female business leaders.