Kevin Franks (MBChB, MRCP, FRCR) is Consultant Clinical Oncologist at St James’s Institute of Oncology (SJIO), Leeds Cancer Centre, Leeds Teaching Hospital, UK.
Dr Franks trained as clinical oncologist in Leeds and completed a two-year clinical research fellow in lung technical radiotherapy at Princess Margaret Hospital under the supervision of Professor Andrea Bezjak and David Jaffray (2005-2007). He was appointed as consultant in Leeds in 2009 and as the clinical Lead for Lung Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy (SABR) he has established a large lung SABR program treating more than 700 patients since 2009.
In the UK, Dr Franks is a founding member of the UK SABR Consortium and is a member of the National Clinical Research Institute Clinical and Translational Radiotherapy Research Group (work stream 4). He was the co-chair of the National Cancer Action Team (NCAT) Image-guided Radiotherapy working group, which produced national guidelines on IGRT use in 2012 and is a member of the British Thoracic Society working group, which has produced guidelines for the investigation and management of pulmonary nodules (2013-2014).
Dr Franks’ research interests are in technical radiotherapy including 4DCT, SABR, image guided radiotherapy (IGRT), intensity + volume modulated radiotherapy (IMRT/VMAT) and radiotherapy informatics.
He is the principal investigator for the SABRtooth trial, a study to determine the feasibility and acceptability of conducting a phase III randomised controlled trial comparing Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy (SABR) with surgery in paTients with peripheral stage I nOn-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cOnsidered To be at Higher risk of complications from surgical resection, which is due to start recruitment in early 2015.
In addition to SABRTooth, he is co-applicant on the ISOTOXIC IMRT CRUK funded UK study evaluating dose-escalated twice-daily intensity-modulated radiotherapy in locally advanced lung cancer: SARON – a CRUK funded study of SABR in addition to chemotherapy and conventional radiotherapy in patients presenting with curable local disease and small number oligometastases; and CORE – a CRUK study (initial phase accepted- full application submitted) of the role of SABR in patients that present with oligometases after curative treatment of breast, lung and prostate cancer.