University of Birmingham women’s cancer expert Dr Sudha Sundar has been chosen as the President-Elect of the British Gynaecological Cancer Society (BGCS), the first female gynaecological oncologist to be elected to this post. 

The BGCS is a society of professionals dedicated to improving the care provided to patients with gynaecological cancers.  The BGCS develops guidelines, advocates for advances in care, helps improve training and education for gynaecological cancer professionals and works in partnership with charities and patients.

Senior Lecturer in Gynaecological Oncology at the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, Dr Sundar becomes the third BGCS President to be elected from the University of Birmingham.

In addition to her clinical and teaching work, Dr Sundar’s research programme investigates clinical challenges in patients with ovarian and endometrial cancer, using a combined clinical trials and translational research approach.

Dr Sundar is Chief Investigator for the ROCKETS project which aims to achieve earlier diagnosis of ovarian cancer collaboration between international experts from KU Leuven (Netherlands), University College London and the University of Birmingham. Translational research in genomics, steroidomics, and metabolomics is underway.

She is also leading the SOCQER 2 study, commissioned by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE), which investigates surgical outcomes in advanced stage ovarian cancer in 15 cancer centres in the UK, Australia and India.

Dr Sundar is the cancer surgery work package lead for the NIHR global health research unit on Global Surgery, which is carrying out surgical research across sub-Saharan Africa, India and other countries. She is also working with partners across India and Africa to establishing matched cohort studies that will help investigate ethnic diversity in women’s cancer genomics.

She trained in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Oxford and in Gynaecological Oncology at the Three Counties cancer centre, Gloucestershire. Dr Sundar also trained in Molecular Oncology as a Cancer Research UK Clinical Fellow at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford.