Consultant Medical Oncologist and Professor of Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Research
Dan Stark trained as a medical oncologist in Cambridge, London and Leeds.
He has played his part in building a specialist clinical service for young people in Leeds since the late 1990s. He has been the medical lead for the cancer service for young people in the Yorkshire region since about 2010.
Having completed a PhD in 2000 in psychiatric symptoms in cancer patients, Dan has overseen a research programme about patient experience, symptoms, using quality of life data in clinical practice, and novel models of follow-up after cancer since 2006. He has held research grants to a value in excess of £10M over the last decade including programmatic grants from Cancer Research UK, The National Cancer Research Institute, European Union FP7 and large project and clinical trial grants from the NIHR, MRC London, and pharmaceutical industry. He holds current grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, Candlelighters Charity and Teenage Cancer Trust.
Clinically, Dan leads a regional NHS specialist cancer service which treats young people with testis cancer or sarcomas, and also supports adult clinicians looking after TYA if they find that helpful.
Dan has led the Research Evaluation and Special Studies module since 2010, a unique 5-year programme teaching every medical student in Leeds to research the clinical practices they see.
Dan is Associate Dean for the Integrated Clinical-Academic training programme of the National Institute for Health Research in Yorkshire. He directs the training of c.25 Physicians in training who are selected competitively to train jointly in a medical specialty and for a research career.
In 2016 Dan was the inaugural chair of the European Network for Teenagers and Young adults with cancer, an EU-wide multi-professional network for service development, research and policy. He sits on the Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer committees of the European Society for paediatric oncology and the joint education committee on AYA oncology of SIOPE and the European Society for Medical Oncology.
In 2017-18 Dan was selected to chair the TYA work-stream revising the NHS England Service Specification for Children and Young People with cancer. In brief, this group recommends the mandated national provision of NHS services for TYA with cancer.
In 2018 Dan became chair of the UK National Cancer Research Institute Research Group for Teenagers and Young Adults with Cancer and Germ cell tumours. This committee has the responsibility to develop national-level research studies in the field.
In 2019 Dan was made Professor of Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Research at the School of Medicine in the University of Leeds. In 2021 Dan co-chaired the Global congress for Adolescent and Young Adults with Cancer.
In 2022 Dan (with others in Leeds) was awarded £1M in grant funding to Leeds for the Strong-AYA project, by the EU and UKRI, to examine the outcomes of TYA with cancer across many European Nations in retrospective and prospective designs.