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Emad Rakha

Professor and Consultant Pathologist, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences

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Biography

I am a Professor of Breast Pathology and Honorary Consultant Pathologist, at the University of Nottingham (UoN) and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, Nottingham, UK. Professor of Pathology, Menoufia University, Egypt. Adjunct Professor of Pathology, Liaquat University, Pakistan, and Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria

My main clinical discipline is Breast Pathology. I am medically qualified and gained Master (MSc pathology) and MD degrees in Pathology (by examination) , PhD in Molecular Pathology (Breast Cancer) from UoN and obtained the Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists by examination. I am the leading member of the multi-disciplinary Nottingham Breast Research and Digital Pathology Research Group at the University of Nottingham. As part of my clinical commitment, I work as a co-chair of the UK National Breast Pathology Interpretive Quality Assurance Scheme (EQA). I am the General Secretary of the International Society of Breast Pathology, Breast Specialty Editor of Histopathology, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of Breast Pathology (BIG18), National Institute of Cancer Research (NICR) Breast Clinical Studies Group (CSG) and its Breast Translational Subgroup, Breast Cancer Screening Programme Research Advisory Committee, the Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland Management Committee, and the international Breast Pathology Group. I served as a member of Breast Cancer Campaign Scientific Advisory Board and I am a member of the Breast Cancer Now Tissue Access Committee.,

I organise the National Nottingham Breast Pathology Masterclass which is an annual course run in Nottingham, UK, Italy, Egypt, Chile, Pakistan and USA (http://nottinghambreastpathologymasterclass.com/).

I run the national and international referral service of breast pathology consultation cases in Nottingham with an average of 350 referral cases per year

During the past 10 years I have been co-author on more than 350 peer-reviewed publications (99 first author publications and 84 senior authors) in addition to 28 articles submitted or in preparation and more than 400 abstract submissions to national and international conferences and meetings. I am an author for 25 book chapters in breast disease including the WHO blue book and Fletcher Diagnostic Histopathology of Tumors new editions and I am acting as a reviewer to 20 indexed and high profile international journals and editor to three journals. I am supervising and co-supervising a number of Postgraduate and undergraduate students at UoN. We have an extensive network of national and international research collaborators.

PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY MEMBERSHIP AND REGISTRATION

  • Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (2008-present)
  • Medical Protection Society (2008-present)
  • Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland (2007-present)
  • British Division of the International Academy of Pathology (2009-present)
  • Nottingham Research Biorepository Access Committee (2010-Present)
  • Breast Cancer Campaign Scientific Advisory Board (2011-2015)
  • UK National Coordinating Committee For Breast Pathology (BIG 18) - 2013-Present
  • NICR Breast CSG Translational Subgroup (2013-Present)
  • International Society of Breast Pathology (2015-present )
  • Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland management Committee (2005-present)
  • Breast Cancer Now, Tissue Bank Access Committee (2016-Present)
  • National Cancer Research Institute, Breast Clinical Studies Group (CSG): (2017- Present)
  • USCAP Abstract Review Board (2018-Present)

AWARDS AND HONOURS

  1. Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) Senior Lecturer Award 2010.
  2. National Bronze Clinical Excellence Award 2017
  3. Invited to contribute to the WHO Classification of Tumours of the Breast, 4th edition 2012 and 5th edition 2018 and represented breast pathology in the WHO consensus meeting on Neuroendocrine Tumours, Lyon 2017
  4. Invited to chairing The Oral Presentations Session of the Breast Category, USCAP meeting and Pathological Society of Great Britain & Ireland.
  5. One of the JCO Tope Cited 50 Authors in by Thomson Reuters
  6. One of the top 20 research articles published by PLoS in 2010
  7. One of the highest cited article in Breast Cancer Research 2012
  8. Fourth (4) of the top twenty most Highly Cited Papers published in the International Journal of Cancer (as of Dec. 2008).
  9. Two of my articles were discussed by Reuters Health New York in their editorials.
  10. Highest ranked abstract, Pathological Society of GB 195th Scientific Meeting 2009 and 202nd meeting 2012.
  11. Highest ranked abstract, 5th European Breast Cancer conference, Nice, France, 2006Nominated for RCPath's Gold and Specialty Medial Awards 2009.
  12. Highest ranked abstract, Pathological Society of GB & Ireland and Dutch Pathological Society, Amsterdam, 2004.
  13. Excellence in Reviewing Award from the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA), 2008.
  14. Best Poster prize, Pathological Society of GB & Ireland, London, 2005.

Expertise Summary

  • Digital Pathology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Pathology
  • Breast Molecular Pathology
  • Breast Diagnostic Pathology

Research Summary

Use of tissue array technology to allow immunophenotypic characterisation of protein expression of a large series of approximately 4000 breast cancer cases from the Nottingham Breast Cancer series.… read more

Selected Publications

Current Research

  • Use of tissue array technology to allow immunophenotypic characterisation of protein expression of a large series of approximately 4000 breast cancer cases from the Nottingham Breast Cancer series. This provides a baseline data set of known and important proteins expressed in breast cancer, the frequency of their expression and their associations. The hypothesis being that breast cancer exhibits a number of distinct phenotypes which are related to different differentiation pathways from stem cell to normal adult cell types and which are influential on tumour behaviour.
  • Molecular characterisation and outcome prediction of DCIS (largest single institution series with 1200 annotated cases)
  • Mechanisms underlying lymphovascular invasion in breast cancer
  • Mechanisms of hormone response and resistance in breast cancer
  • Special types of breast cancer including Papillary carcinoma and metaplastic carcinoma and adenomyoepithelioma.
  • Assessment of the role of different DNA repair pathways in cancer
  • Molecular classification, molecular prediction assays in breast cancer
  • Using digital Pathology and Novel Imaging technique in breast cancer diagnosis and prognosis
  • Biobanking

Future Research

  • Digital Pathology and Artificial intelligence
  • Deciphering molecular mechanisms underlying lymphovascular invasion in breast cancer
  • Breast cancer with weak oestrogen receptor expression and its biological significance
  • Molecular and phenotypic characterisation of DCIS
  • Molecular pathology and triple negative breast cancer and therapeutic implications
  • Impact of biological features local recurrences on the behaviour and outcome of breast cancer and relating these to primary tumours characteristics
  • DNA damage repair profiling in breast cancer with in vitro modeling
  • General aspects of breast cancer biology, pathology, molecular genetics, morphology, diagnosis, classification and behaviour
  • Using Raman Spectroscopy technology to identify cancer cells in breast specimen excision margins and sentinel lymph nodes intraoperatively

Group resources include expertise in:

  • Molecular Pathology,
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Image analysis
  • Immunocytochemistry
  • Tissue Microarrays
  • Laser microdissection
  • Tissue culture
  • PCR and RT-qPCR
  • Raman Spectroscopy.
  • Gene expression array and NGS
  • Histology / Morphological assessment of tissue

Current PhD students

  • Ayat Lashen
  • Asmaa Ibrahim
  • Shorouk Makhlouf
  • Nehal Atallah
  • Suzan Ghannam
  • Nabeelah Atallah

Staff

  • Dr Andrew Green PhD
  • Dr Mansour Alsaleem
  • Alex Dean
  • Holly Brown
  • Mollie Joyce

We are welcoming new PhD students

School of Medicine

University of Nottingham
Medical School
Nottingham, NG7 2UH

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