Professor Robert Hills
Contact information
Robert Hills
Professor of Medical Statistics
Robert Hills studied mathematics at the University of Oxford, where his DPhil was on exploration of symmetries with applications to superconductivity. He joined the CTSU in 1993 as a programmer on the QUASAR trial in colorectal cancer. Following a brief period working in low temperature physics at the University of Nottingham, he moved to the University of Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit (BCTU) in 1997.There, he worked on clinical trials in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia, Alzheimer’s Disease, women’s health and many others as well as large scale individual patient data meta-analyses of treatment for colorectal cancer.
In 2006, he moved to Cardiff University as statistical lead for the NCRI/MRC trials in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia. During his 12 years in Cardiff he was head of the Haematology Clinical Trials Unit, and latterly led on clinical cancer research methodology and haematological malignancies. The novel designs used in these trials allow the clinical value of disease monitoring to be evaluated, as well as numerous targeted therapies in designs that allow for an early change from an unpromising new therapy to one with greater potential. Additionally, he continued his work on the integration of laboratory and clinical data, and on individual patient data meta-analyses, where he demonstrated a survival benefit for gentuzumab ozogamicin in AML.
In 2018, he moved back to the University of Oxford where he is part of the Early Breast Cancer Trialists' Collaborative Group.
Recent publications
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Combination of a mitogen-activated protein kinase inhibitor with the tyrosine kinase inhibitor pacritinib combats cell adhesion-based residual disease and prevents re-expansion of FLT3-ITD acute myeloid leukaemia.
Journal article
Zabkiewicz J. et al, (2020), Br J Haematol
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Analysis of the clinical impact of NPM1 mutant allele burden in a large cohort of younger adult patients with acute myeloid leukaemia.
Journal article
Linch DC. et al, (2020), Br J Haematol, 188, 852 - 859
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Molecular MRD status and outcome after transplantation in NPM1-mutated AML.
Journal article
Dillon R. et al, (2020), Blood, 135, 680 - 688
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The clinical impact of mutant DNMT3A R882 variant allele frequency in acute myeloid leukaemia.
Journal article
Linch DC. et al, (2020), Br J Haematol
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Evaluating sixty years of UK trials research in acute myeloid leukaemia: lessons for trial design, past, present and future.
Journal article
Hills RK., (2020), Br J Haematol, 188, 29 - 35