The Christie Charity
Dr Diana Tait was appointed as a Non-Executive Director in January 2024. Dr Tait is a consultant clinical oncologist at the Royal Marsden and has a specialist interest in upper gastrointestinal (GI), colorectal, hepatobiliary, anal and breast cancers. She has a particular interest in GI chemoradiotherapy and the use of modern radiotherapy techniques for optimising treatment including IMRT, SABR and IGRT, providing complex radiotherapy techniques for patients.
In 2017, Dr Tait was appointed to the Board of Trustees for Bowel Cancer UK. As well as carrying out general board duties, she participates in reviewing patient information publications. She also sits on their research and nominations sub-committees.
From 2018 to 2021, she was Senior Associate Editor for the Gastrointestinal Team for the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology and Physics, overseeing the reviewing process for submitted papers.
Between September 2013 to 2015, Dr Tait was Vice-President and Dean for the Faculty of Clinical Oncology at Royal College of Radiologists. She sat on numerous national committees looking into developing, setting and maintaining national standards and implementing modern radiotherapy techniques to improve quality of care for cancer patients.
In June 2022 Dr Tait, became faculty member of the Gastrointestinal Cancers Section in Faculty Opinions. This involves reading and writing short commentaries/recommendations of published papers that would be high interest to the clinical community.
She is Principal Investigator on the “Deferral of Surgery” trial, a rectal cancer study which involved intensive follow-up for patients who may be able to avoid rectal surgery by adopting a “watch and wait” policy (Deferral of Surgery trial). This study is now closed having reached accrual and the data is presently being evaluated prior to publication. Dr Tait is also Principal Investigator on 6 v 12 study, a multi-centre randomised trial looking at the timing of assessment following chemoradiation for advanced rectal cancer.
Dr Tait’s main research interests focus around using new radiotherapy technologies to improve treatment delivery, reduce side effects and improve patient outcomes.