I studied medicine at the University of Southampton, qualifying as Bachelor of Medicine (Distinction) in July 2001. After House Officer and Specialist Registrar (Histopathology) posts in Salisbury,Bournemouth and Southampton,in 2008 I became Consultant Histopathologist at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital and Honorary Senior Lecturer, University of Southampton. During this time I successfully completed a Masters of Medical Education (MMedEd) qualification from the University of Dundee (November 2006), became a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (FRCPath – May 2007) and was awarded my CCT ( Histopathology) in February 2008.
In January 2011 I moved to the OUH NHS Trust and since then I have been the Lead for Molecular Pathology, Lead for Uropathology, an Educational Supervisor (for Cellular Pathology) and Consultant in Cellular Pathology, specialising in urological and molecular pathology I am the Thames Valley supraregional lead for germ cell tumour pathology and Senior Clinical Lecturer, University of Oxford. In 2015 I became a full time member of NDS and joined the NDS Management Committee. I am currently undertaking an MSc in Genomic Medicine with the Queen Mary University London (by distance learning).
Other roles and titles I hold are:
2016 to present day – Deputy lead for Testicular Genomic Clinical Interpretation Partnership (GeCIP) for 100,000 Genomes Project (Genomics England)
2015 to present day – Human Tissue Act Designated Individual, University of Oxford research license 12217
2015 to present day – Chief Investigator of Oxford Radcliffe Biobank
2014 to present day – Lead for molecular pathology, Oxford Genomic Medicine Centre
2014 to present day – Member of NCRI Clinical Studies Group for testis
Clare Verrill
BM, FRCPath,MMedEd
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Honorary Consultant in Cellular Pathology
RESEARCH SUMMARY
As Lead for Molecular Pathology within the Oxford Genomic Medicine Centre (the Genomics England / 100k Genome Project), I lead the pathology aspects of the project and am involved in operations for the ‘cancer’ part. Having been part of the BRC pilots for Genomics England, we successfully submitted batches of fresh frozen and formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) material for sequencing and are now starting to receive this data. We have also been optimising the formalin fixation protocols to maximise the chances of successfully obtaining good quality DNA from FFPE for whole genome sequencing. I have been involved in writing the national protocols for tissue handling for the 100k Genome Project.
I have been interviewed for a training video as a pathology expert for a new online tool for estimating percentage tumour content for whole genome sequencing for the education programme for the 100,000 Genomes Project (Genomics England).
https://www.nds.ox.ac.uk/news/new-training-tool-features-dr-clare-verrill
I am also featured in an online training video, presenting the pathology content for the Genomics England training programme: “Sample Processing and DNA Extraction” https://www.genomicseducation.hee.nhs.uk/courses/courses/sample-processing-for-whole-genome-sequencing/. The film also features Prof Sue Hill (UK Chief Scientific Officer)
I am involved in several urology based projects at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and work closely with several members of Prof Hamdy’s research group, among others. This includes being involved in tissue banking for the prostate section of ICGC (International Cancer Genome Consortium) and being a member of the central review panel of pathologists reviewing cases for eligibility for this study. I am currently working on projects involving Epithelial Mesenchymal Transformation at the leading edge of prostatic adenocarcinomas and neuroendocrine transformation in prostate cancer. I am involved in several collaborative clinical trials including PART, which is a randomised controlled trial of Partial prostate Ablation versus Radical prosTatectomy (PART) in intermediate risk, unilateral clinically localised prostate cancer and Vance, which is a trial of a prostate cancer vaccine before radical prostatectomy.
Digital Pathology
One of my developing research interests is in digital pathology and I am collaborating with Prof Jens Rittscher (Professor of Bioengineering, University of Oxford) in image analysis of the Prompt prostate samples. I also have a collaboration with Prof Johan Lundin at the Finnish Institute of Molecular Medicine (FIMM) who have extensive expertise in image analysis of histological sections. We are currently working on image analysis and algorithm development on features predictive of prognosis in testicular tumours and also unsupervised machine learning on prostate cancer, predicting features of outcome. I am chair of the Oxford Digital Pathology Academic Forum – an academic group including pathologists, engineers and statisticians from which several novel collaborations have been developed.