Thoracic Consultant Clinical Oncologist
Dr Kevin Franks is a Thoracic Consultant Clinical Oncologist, Deputy Director for the Leeds NIHR Clinical Research Facility and the Clinical Lead for Oncology Research and Innovation at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
Following a 2-year research fellowship at the Princess Margaret Hospital/University of Toronto in technical lung cancer radiotherapy he returned to Leeds and was the clinical lead for the team that implemented lung Stereotactic ABlative Radiotherapy (SABR) in Leeds in 2009. Leeds was the first centre in the UK to use this innovative technique and have treated more than 2000 patients since 2009 and he was a founder member of the UK SABR Consortium and the ex-chair of the UK SABR Research Sub-Group.
He was the co-chair of national guidelines for;
· National Cancer Action Team (NCAT) Image-Guided Radiotherapy (IGRT) working group -national guidelines published 2012
· On Target 2: updated guidance for image-guided radiotherapy. Radiotherapy Board (Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine/College of Radiographers/Royal College of Radiologists) – published 2021.
As and was a member of the working group on many other national guidelines including;
· Member of the British Thoracic Society Working Group on the management of solitary pulmonary nodules – guidelines published 2018.
· Core member of the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) Radiotherapy for lung cancer – RCR consensus statements working group – published 2020.
· Core member of RCR guideline for lung radiotherapy during COVID-19 – published 2020.
He is an Associate Professor at the University of Leeds, and his research interests are in Lung Cancer including technical radiotherapy, SABR, cancer informatics, quality of life, patient optimization and novel agent/SABR+RT combinations.
He was the chief investigator for the NIHR funded SABRtooth trial or SABR versus Surgery, is the co-chief investigator of the YCR funded PREHAB trial looking at exercise, diet and smoking cessation in curative lung cancer patients receiving radiotherapy and is also involved in many national and international trials in lung cancer RT and SABR including trials of RT combined with novel therapies and trial of new agents/chemotherapy in the advanced disease setting.