A urological surgeon at UCLH has won an award for his work on rare male genital cancers and diseases.
Mr Asif Muneer received the Karl Storz-Harold Hopkins Golden Telescope Award at the British Association of Urological Surgeons’ annual meeting.
The prize is awarded to surgeons who have made a ‘significant and lasting contribution to urology’ within 10 years of their first consultant appointment.
The award recognised Mr Muneer’s work to improve clinical outcomes for patients with rare male genital cancers and diseases, and for his penile cancer research programme which is one of the largest in the world.
This research continues to expand in partnership with European centres who are part of the European Reference Network eUROGEN programme.
The awards committee recognised Mr Muneer’s research achievements as particularly impressive as funding for rare cancers is limited.
There are around 500-600 new cases of penile cancer each year in the UK.
Patients with penile cancer whose cancer hasn’t spread beyond the lymph nodes in the groins have a good chance of long term recovery. But where the cancer has spread, systemic treatment options – which seek to treat the whole body – are not yet as effective compared to other male cancers such as testicular cancer.
Mr Muneer, who is supported by the BRC, said:
‘I’m delighted to receive this award, and also excited about expanding our research programme – which we are now doing with partners across Europe.’
‘This research is vital and I have a fantastic team at UCLH working together in this disease area. Treatment for penile cancer which has spread is still not as successful as treatment given for other cancers. We will be looking at new ways of detecting early cancer spread to the lymph nodes and also researching treatments for advanced forms of these cancers.’
