Sara Valpione

Name

Sara Valpione

Job title

Clinical Senior Lecturer, Consultant Medical Oncologist in Upper GI Oncology and Clinician in Residence of the National Biomarker Centre

Email Address

of secretary/PA varsha.mistry4@nhs.net

Phone number

0161 446 3000 (switchboard)

Qualifications

MBChB/MBBS (Honours), PhD (Doctor Europeus), MRCP (Medical Oncology)

Specialities

Medical oncology, Immunotherapy, Gastrointestinal, Lung, Neuroendocrine, Melanoma

Started at The Christie (Year)

2015 (2021 as consultant)

Responsibilities

Dr Sara Valpione is a consultant medical oncologist within the Upper GI team. Her clinical practice is in caring for adult patients with tumours of the oesophagos (food pipe), stomach or a neuroendocrine tumour of the lung receiving standard and experimental systemic therapies (tablets/capsules or intravenous).

Professional biography

Dr Valpione is a clinical senior lecturer and honorary consultant medical oncologist in upper GI tumours at The University of Manchester and The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, and Clinician in Residence at Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre. While caring for cancer patients, she is also leading on translational research projects at the Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre/University of Manchester to improve the life of patients with a tumour of the oesophagus or stomach. Her research focuses on new liquid biopsies to improve the life of patients with tumours of the oesophagus or the stomach receiving standard treatments, and on the development of a new precision medicine to prolong patients' lives.

Dr Valpione completed her medical degree, specialty training in Medical Oncology and PhD at The University of Padua (Italy), where she was conferred the award Alumna of the Year in 2017 for her achievements in cancer research. She had her first appointment as a Medical Oncologist at Veneto Oncology Research Institute (IOV-IRCCS, Italy) in 2014. In 2015, she was the recipient of the prestigious ESMO Clinical Research Fellowship and moved to The Christie to pursue a collaborative translational project at The Christie and Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute, the results of which were awarded a Conquer Cancer Foundation Merit Award in 2017. In 2024, she has been awarded an N1 National Clinical Impact Award for her work for the NHS since when appointed as a consultant at The Christie.

To further develop as a clinician-scientist in the field of immune-oncology, Dr Valpione visited The Irving Cancer Center at Columbia University as a post-graduate visiting student was awarded an ESMO Translational Research Unit Visiting Fellowship at Karolinska Institute during her training.

In 2018, Dr Valpione was awarded a Career Development Award from the Harry J Lloyd Charitable trust to lead a translational project in immune-oncology at The Christie and Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute, where she discovered a new approach to liquid biopsies to identify patients who respond to immunotherapy. Dr Valpione is currently the lead of the LOCATE consortium, a UK-wide research programme funded by the Medical Research Council to engineer a multiscale precision nanomedicine for oesophageal cancer.

She is an alumna of the Society for Immunology of Cancers Sparkathon and of the ESMO Leaders Generation Programme.

She actively serves as a member of the ESMO Upper GI Faculty, the EORTC gastrointestinal group and minimal residual disease task force. She is the EDI lead for the Precision Oncology theme of the Manchester British Research Council.

Research Interest

Cancer immunology; Cancer immunotherapy; Cell therapy (TILs); Oncolytic Viruses; Liquid Biopsies; Translational research; Immune biomarkers; Cell death; Clinical trials; Hard to treat cancers; Improve access to cancer treatments.