Consultant Colorectal Surgeon & Director of the Polyposis Registry
Sue Clark is the Clinical Director of the Polyposis Registry. She trained in medicine at Cambridge University and St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School in London. She spent two years in full time research at St Mark’s Hospital with an Imperial Cancer Research Fund Fellowship. She was based in the Polyposis Registry and worked on various clinical aspects of desmoid disease in Familial Adenomatous Polyposis as well as studying the genetic changes within these rare tumours.
She spent three years as a consultant at the Royal London Hospital before returning to St Mark’s. During this time Sue set up a Family Cancer Clinic to provide services for inherited or potentially inherited colorectal cancer in the North East London Cancer Network.
Dr Andrew Latchford
Consultant Gastroenterologist and Assistant Director of the Polyposis Registry
Andrew Latchford is a Consultant Gastroenterologist at St Mark’s Hospital and Assistant Director of the Polyposis Registry with a specialist interest in upper GI endoscopy.
Andrew Latchford’s research interests include the study of desmoid disease and duodenal cancer in patients with Familial Adenomatous Polyposis (FAP).
Dr Kevin Monahan
FRCP PhD | Consultant Gastroenterologist
Consultant Gastroenterologist and Endoscopist at the Lynch Syndrome and Family Cancer Clinic, Polyposis Registry and Wolfson Endoscopy Unit, at St Mark’s Hospital, London.
Dr Monahan undertook his PhD at Cancer Research UK and at St Mark’s Hospital, and has spent 9 years working at West Middlesex University Hospital and Chelsea & Westminster Hospital where he still leads a cancer genetics clinic. He is also an honorary senior clinical lecturer at Imperial College London.
Dr Monahan performs genetic testing, endoscopic and other screening for gastrointestinal cancer in susceptible populations, such as those people with a family history of cancer, and also has an interest in prevention and early detection of cancer. He has research interests in clinical and molecular aspects of gastrointestinal pathology, particularly in the field of endoscopy, colorectal, pancreatic and other gastrointestinal cancers.
He also leads regional and national quality improvement work designed to improve access to care for people with Lynch syndrome and other inherited diseases.
Mr Ash Sinha
Mr Ashish Sinha BMBS BMedSci (Hons) MD FRCS Consultant Colorectal and General Surgeon
Mr Ashish Sinha is a Consultant Colorectal and General Surgeon and an Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College, London.
Mr Ashish Sinha qualified in medicine from the University of Nottingham and did his surgical specialisation in London and the Southeast of England. His area of clinical interest is colorectal surgery including surgical management of colorectal cancer, IBD and General Surgery.
Mr Sinha has a special interest in inherited colorectal cancers and surgery in the elderly. He undertook a research higher degree at the Polyposis Registry, St Mark’s Hospital, evaluating surgery for patients with Familial Adenomatous Polyposis and characterising rare desmoid tumours.
Vicky Cuthill
Consultant Nurse/Manager of the Polyposis Registry and Family Cancer
Vicky obtained her BSc(Hons) Nursing Studies from King’s College, London before specialising in intensive care nursing and then transferring into the field of Coloproctology. Initially she worked at The Royal London Hospital, gaining experience in benign colorectal conditions and undertaking ano-rectal physiology and biofeedback. She then moved to The Homerton Hospital as the Colorectal Cancer nurse specialist prior to becoming a Nurse Practitioner in The Polyposis Registry.
Vicky was appointed as Lead Nurse/Manager of The Polyposis Registry and Family Cancer Clinic following Kay Neale’s retirement in November 2016. As a nurse practitioner, Vicky has undertaken various training (e.g. physical assessment and independent prescribing) to be able to carry out extended roles and completed an MSc in Genomic Medicine in July 2019, obtaining a distinction. She now divides her time between her work as a nurse practitioner, running nurse-led clinics, both in outpatients and over the telephone and Registry/Family Cancer Clinic management.
Jeshu Chauhan
Polyposis and Family CancerNurse Practitioner
Jeshu has been qualified for almost 25 years. She started her career as a part-time community nurse, whilst bringing up her two young children. She remained in district nursing for 14 years, working with patients with a range of conditions including diabetes, leg ulcers and those requiring palliative care.
Embarking on a new challenge, Jeshu moved to the “Starrs” team at Northwick Park Hospital. Here her skills as a Rapid Response Nurse were enhanced by working with GPs in the community and caring for very ill patients at home, thereby preventing hospital admission. In this role she also facilitated timely discharge and provided homecare for patients that would otherwise have had protracted hospital stays.
Jeshu joined The Polyposis Registry in March 2015 where she continues to enjoy working with patients and their families. She enjoys being an integral member of The Registry, dividing her time between her autonomous outpatient and telephone clinics, visiting patients on the ward and her office administrative work.
Dr Warren Hyer
Consultant Paediatrician and Consultant Paediatric Gastroenterologist
Warren Hyer is the Paediatric and Adolescent Gastroenterologist at St Mark’s Hospital with clinics in paediatric inflammatory bowel disease and paediatric nutrition and allergy. He has published widely on polyposis syndromes in children and is the lead clinician for the UK paediatric polyposis service.
Jackie Hawkins
Paediatric Polyposis Nurse Practitioner
Jackie Hawkins is a Paediatric Nurse Practitioner specialising in caring for children in families with a polyposis syndrome. She qualified as a Children’s Nurse in 1991 and has worked at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London where she achieved a BSc in Child Health and her interest in paediatric gastroenterology began. Jackie has also worked in general paediatrics where she managed the general paediatric ward and Day care unit at Northwick Park Hospital before returning to gastroenterology as a research nurse for an International study based in the Polyposis Registry.
Since April 2014 Jackie has been working as the paediatric nurse developing the service and looking after children and ‘young adults’ with polyposis syndromes. Jackie sees children with their parents before their surveillance procedures to assess and fully prepare them and sees children and their families in her own clinics and also visits them on the wards, following procedures and surgery. She is currently undertaking an MSc in the Advanced Children’s Nurse Practitioner programme.
Menna Hawkins
Polyposis and Family Cancer Nurse Practitioner
Prior to training as a nurse, Menna worked in various administrative roles including PA to the Dean of Business in Melbourne’s RMIT University, Australia. Having decided on a career change, she studied her post graduate diploma in adult nursing in Southampton University, qualifying with distinction in February 2016.
In her first 12 months, Menna worked on a specialist surgical gastroenterology ward in Bristol before deciding to relocate back to London and gain more specialist experience at St Mark’s. Menna initially worked as a family history nurse, identifying ‘at risk’ relatives through family history taking and performing genetic counselling and blood testing. She has recently been appointed as a nurse practitioner in inherited intestinal cancer syndromes and will cover both Lynch and Polyposis Syndromes.
James Cockburn
Polyposis and Family Cancer Nurse Practitioner
James qualified as a nurse in 2016. Prior to this he worked as a singer on board various cruise liners around the world.
Having a keen interest in gastroenterology and colorectal diseases, he joined St Mark’s hospital and worked on Frederick Salmon ward. This opportunity allowed him to become confident when caring for patients with complex and rare colorectal conditions.
In 2017 James was successful in being awarded a scholarship from the Burdett Trust for Nursing. As a Burdett scholar he rotated though the specialist departments at St Marks. He completed a degree-level stoma management course and developed an array of skills required for specialist nursing. Having completed this scholarship James returned to Frederick Salmon ward as a charge nurse and joined the Polyposis Registry as a family history nurse in October 2019.
Cherryl Cabalit
Polyposis and Family Cancer Nurse Practitioner
Cherryl is our newest team member and started in the Registry in July 2020. She previously worked as an endoscopy nurse at Central Middlesex Hospital and has brought her knowledge and skills to assist with family history taking, cascade testing and patient care in the Registry.
Ripple Man
Polyposis Nurse Endoscopist
Ripple is a Nurse Endoscopist, performing diagnostic and therapeutic endoscopy. A substantial proportion of her patients have polyposis syndromes, and she has developed great experience and skill in this field.
Laura Monje-Garcia
Nurse Practitioner
Laura qualified as a nurse in 2003. She started her career as a health care assistant in an oncology/haematology ward. When she qualified, she worked in Accident and Emergency for over 5 years. While working as a nurse she obtained her BSc (Hons) in Psychology. She then moved to clinical research where she worked as a nurse in many different specialities and trials, including phase I chemotherapy trials. Later she developed an interest in genetics and worked in observational studies to discover new genes associated with dementia and heart disease, which aimed to understand genetic conditions’ progression and identify solutions to prevent or minimise the impact of the known genetic alterations.
As a nurse, she supported families living with inherited conditions and developed an interest in the emotional experience of living with a genetic diagnosis. This motivated her to complete her MSc in Health Psychology and Genomic Medicine. She meets the graduate basis for chartered membership of the British psychological society and is also a general member of the division of health psychology.
She then worked as a clinical nurse specialist for over 3 years supporting families with inherited cardiac conditions. She started working at St Mark’s centre for familial intestinal cancer in August 2020. She divides her time working in the lynch syndrome quality improvement project lead by Dr Kevin Monahan and supporting families in the centre.
Professor Omar Faiz
Consultant Colorectal Surgeon
Professor Omar Faiz is the Clinical Director of St Mark’s Hospital and Consultant Colorectal Surgeon with particular expertise in laparoscopic (keyhole) surgery. His area of clinical interest is colorectal surgery and in particular the surgical management of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) and colorectal cancer.
He has wide research interests and he supervises a number of PhD and MD research fellows at Imperial College. His principal research interests include colorectal surgical epidemiology, health services research and surgical outcome research.
Carleen Tsolu
Assistant Service Manager for Polyposis and Family Cancer
Carleen Started with the Family Cancer as a contractor to undertake a project work in 2019 as a Database Manager. She had previously worked at The Charing Cross Hospital (Imperial) in an administrative role with Trauma & Orthopaedics (T & O).
She has also worked at the London Metropolitan University with The Quality Enhancement Unit (QEU) as a Collaborative Supervision working closely with a number of collaborative partners both in the UK and overseas to deliver courses that lead to a university award and provide the best possible learning experience to a wider audience.
She has a knowledge in Business Information Technology and Computer Networking & Cyber Security and is currently undertaken a role as a Assistant Service Manager under the department of Family Cancer and Polyposis Registry.
