Professor Hisham Mehanna PhD, BMedSc, MBChB, FRCS, FRCS(ORL-HNS)

Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences
Director, Institute for Global Innovation and the Institute for Advanced Studies
Chair, Head and Neck Surgery, Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences
Director, Institute of Head and Neck Studies and Education (InHANSE)

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0)121 414 8753
Email: h.mehanna@bham.ac.uk
PA: Gemma Jones: g.jones@bham.ac.uk
Twitter: @inhanseresearch

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Address: Institute of Head and Neck Studies and Education
Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences
Robert Aitken Building
Vincent Drive
University of Birmingham
Birmingham B15 2TT

Professor Mehanna is the Chair of Head and Neck Surgery and is the Director of the Institute of Head and Neck Studies and Education (InHANSE) at the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences. Professor Mehanna is also the Director of the Institute for Global Innovation which undertakes multidisciplinary solution-focussed research on the challenges affecting the world on a global level. He is a head and neck and thyroid surgeon with clinical interests in recurrent head and neck cancer, carotid body surgery and thyroid and parathyroid surgery.

Professor Mehanna has a keen interest in clinical research, especially in clinical trials evaluating the efficacy and effectiveness of new interventions, therapeutic agents and biomarkers in head and neck and thyroid cancer. He runs a research team of over 20 members and holds over £12million in grants from the National Institute for Health Research Unit, Cancer Research UK, Macmillan Cancer Research and industry. Professor Mehanna has recently been appointed as an NIHR Senior Investigator.

Professor Mehanna is the current President of the British Association of Head and Neck Oncologists and is the past Chair of the UK’s National Cancer Research Institute Head and Neck Group. He is also the Secretary General of the Head and Neck Cancer International Group, an international collaborative of 20 clinical trials groups

Staff details
Policy information

Qualifications

PhD, Assessment of Quality of Life in Head and Neck Cancers. Erasmus University 2010
FRCS (ORL-HNS) 2002
FRCS Glasgow 1998
MBChB (Hons) University of Glasgow 1994
B.Med.Sc (Hons) University of Kuwait 1990

Teaching

Professor Mehanna runs several post graduate courses and meetings, including the ‘Controversies in the management of head and neck cancer’ meeting. He also serves on the organising committee of several large international conferences, and has served on faculty of many conferences and courses. He is currently the Academic Chair for the British Academic Conference of Otorhinolaryngology-head and neck surgery (BACO International) 2020.

Postgraduate supervision

Hisham Mehanna is the Chair of Head and Neck Surgery and is the Director of the Institute of Head and Neck Studies and Education (InHANSE) at the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences. He is a head and neck and thyroid surgeon with clinical interests in microvascular reconstructive surgery and endoscopic thyroid and parathyroid surgery. He has a keen interest in clinical research, especially in clinical trials evaluating the efficacy and effectiveness of new interventions, therapeutic agents and biomarkers in head and neck and thyroid cancer.

Professor Mehanna is also the Chair of the UK’s National Cancer Research Institute Head and Neck Group.He is also the Chair of the Research Committee of the British Association of Head Neck Oncologists. He serves on the Council of the Royal Society of Medicine, Laryngology Section, the Council of the International Association of Oral Oncology and was also past Secretary of the Otorhinolaryngological Research Society. He is happy to supervise doctoral research related to his research interests.

Other activities

Council Member, University of Birmingham 2015 – 2019
President, British Association of Head Neck Oncologists, 2017-2019
Secretary, Head and Neck Cancer International Group (HNCIG) 2016 - present
Chair, UK’s National Cancer Research Institute Head and Neck Group 2012-2018

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Mehanna, H, Zeidler, SVV & Gillison, M 2020, 'Adapting head and neck cancer management in the times of COVID-19', International Journal of Radiation: Oncology - Biology - Physics .

Mehanna, H 2020, 'Deescalation after De-ESCALaTE and RTOG 106: a Head and Neck Cancer InterGroup (HNCIG) framework for future deescalation studies', Journal of Clinical Oncology .

Kong, A, Good, JS, Kirkham, A, Savage, J, Mant, R, Llewellyn, L, Parish, J, Spruce, R, Forster, M, Schipani, S, Harrington, K, Sacco, JJ, Murray, P, Middleton, G, Yap, C & Mehanna, H 2020, 'A phase I trial of WEE1 inhibition with chemotherapy and radiotherapy as adjuvant treatment, and a window of opportunity trial with cisplatin in patients with head and neck cancer: the WISTERIA trial protocol', BMJ open, vol. 10, no. 3, e033009. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-033009

Mehanna, H, Rischin, D, Wong, S & Grégoire, V 2020, 'Deescalation After De-ESCALaTE and RTOG 1016: A Head and Neck Cancer InterGroup (HNCIG) Framework for Future Deescalation Studies', Journal of Clinical Oncology .

Jones, D, Mistry, P, Dalby, M, Fulton-Lieuw, T, Kong, A, Dunn, J, Mehanna, H & Gray, A 2020, 'Concurrent cisplatin or cetuximab with radiotherapy for HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancer: medical resource use, costs, and quality-adjusted survival from the De-ESCALaTE HPV trial', European Journal of Cancer, vol. 124, pp. 178-185. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejca.2019.10.025

Lai, SL, Tan, ML, Hollows, RJ, Robinson, M, Ibrahim, M, Margielewska, S, Parkinson, EK, Ramanathan, A, Zain, RB, Mehanna, H, Spruce, RJ, Wei, W, Chung, I, Murray, PG, Yap, LF & Paterson, IC 2019, 'Collagen induces a more proliferative, migratory and chemoresistant phenotype in head and neck cancer via DDR1', Cancers, vol. 11, no. 11, 1766 , pp. 1-16. https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers11111766

Brooks, J, Antao Mobre De Menezes, ARE, Ibrahim, M, Archer, L, Lal, N, Bagnall, C, Zeidler, SVV, Valentine, H, Spruce, R, Batis, N, Bryant, J, Hartley, M, Kaul, B, Ryan, G, Bao, R, Khattri, A, Lee, S, Ogbureke, KUE, Middleton, G, Tennant, D, Beggs, A, Deeks, J, West, CML, Cazier, J-B, Willcox, B, Seiwert, TY & Mehanna, H 2019, 'Development and validation of a combined hypoxia and immune prognostic classifier for head and neck cancer', Clinical Cancer Research, vol. 25, no. 17, pp. 5315-5328. https://doi.org/10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-18-3314

Bryant, J, Batis, N, Franke, AC, Clancey, G, Hartley, M, Ryan, G, Brooks, J, Southam, AD, Barnes, N, Parish, J, Roberts, S, Khanim, F, Spruce, R & Mehanna, H 2019, 'Repurposed quinacrine synergizes with cisplatin, reducing the effective dose required for treatment of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma', OncoTarget, vol. 10, no. 50, pp. 5229-5244. https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.27156

Cohen, EEW & Mehanna, H 2019, 'The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer consensus statement on immunotherapy for the treatment of squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (HNSCC)', Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, vol. 7, 184. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40425-019-0662-5

Roberts, S, Evans, D, Mehanna, H & Parish, J 2019, 'Modelling human papillomavirus biology in oropharyngeal keratinocytes', Royal Society of London. Philosophical Transactions B. Biological Sciences, vol. 374, no. 1773, 20180289. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2018.0289

Hollows, R, Wei, W, Cazier, J-B, Mehanna, H, Parry, G, Halford, G & Murray, P 2019, 'Association between loss of Y chromosome and poor prognosis in male head and neck squamous cell carcinoma', Head & Neck, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 993-1006. https://doi.org/10.1002/hed.25537

De-ESCALaTE HPV Trial Group 2019, 'Radiotherapy plus cisplatin or cetuximab in low-risk human papillomavirus-positive oropharyngeal cancer (De-ESCALaTE HPV): an open-label randomised controlled phase 3 trial', The Lancet, vol. 393, no. 10166, pp. 51-60. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)32752-1

Golusinski, P, Di Maio, P, Pehlivan, B, Colley, S, Nankivell, P, Kong, A, Hartley, A & Mehanna, H 2019, 'Evidence for the approach to the diagnostic evaluation of squamous cell carcinoma occult primary tumors of the head and neck', Oral Oncology, vol. 88, pp. 145-152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oraloncology.2018.11.020

Comment/debate

ICOnIC Africa, Sharma, N, Fagan, J, Wallace, M, Joubert, E, Greef, L, Konney, A, Simonds, H, Vanderpuye, V, Sewram, V, Young, T & Mehanna, H 2020, 'Prioritisation of research topics for head and neck cancer in Africa – Report of the International Collaboration On Improving Cancer outcomes in low and middle income countries – ICOnIC Africa', Oral Oncology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oraloncology.2019.104503

Conference contribution

Song, T-H, Landini, G, Fouad, S & Mehanna, H 2019, Epithelial segmentation from in situ hybridisation histological samples using a deep central attention learning approach. in 2019 IEEE 16th International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI 2019)., 8759384, Proceedings - International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging, vol. 2019-April, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), pp. 1527-1531, 2019 IEEE 16th International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging , Venice, Italy, 8/04/19. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISBI.2019.8759384

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