Olga Oikonomidou Research Group

Clinical Translational Research in Breast Cancer

Olga Oikonomidou
Dr Olga Oikonomidou - Consultant Medical Oncologist - Senior Clinical Lecturer in Breast Cancer Medicine & Breast Cancer Translational Research Group Leader\Dr Oikonomidou’s major on-going interests include clinical and translational research in breast cancer.

Research in a Nutshell

Dr Oikonomidou’s group is developing non-invasive analyses of breast cancer in order to understand better the breast cancer biology, identify potential therapeutic targets in cancer (early and advanced) and identify early a patient’s response to treatment.

 

Research Programme

 

People

 
Olga OikonomidouSenior Clinical Lecturer in Breast Cancer Medicine & Consultant Medical Oncologist Breast Cancer Translational Research Group Leader & Principal Investigator
Natalie WilsonTissue Consenter/Processor
Yuqin Wang PhD student
Fiona SempleSenior Post Doctoral Fellow

Contact

Olga.Oikonomidou@ed.ac.uk

Key Publications

  1. Real-World Clinical Outcomes Associated With First-Line Palbociclib and Aromatase Inhibitor Therapy Among Patients With HR+/HER2− Advanced Breast Cancer in Europe.  Olga Oikonomidou, Achim Woeckel, Elena Galve-Calvo, Mark Beresford, Rohan C Parikh, Justin Doan, Connie Chen, Benjamin Li, Valerie Ansquer Derrien, Gaelle Frugier, Abigail Hitchens, Maria Jimenez, Keith Davis, Edward I Broughton. Accepted for publication at ‘’Breast Cancer Research and Treatment’’. (April 2025)
  2. Multicenter, Prospective, Randomized Controlled Trial of High-Sensitivity Cardiac Troponin I–Guided Combination Angiotensin Receptor Blockade and Beta-Blocker Therapy to Prevent Anthracycline Cardiotoxicity: The Cardiac CARE Trial. Peter A Henriksen, Peter Hall, Iain R MacPherson, Shruti S Joshi, Trisha Singh, Morag Maclean, Steff Lewis, Aryelly Rodriguez, Alex Fletcher, Russell J Everett, Harriet Stavert, Angus Broom, Lois Eddie, Lorraine Primrose, Heather McVicars, Pam McKay, Annabel Borley, Clare Rowntree, Simon Lord, Graham Collins, John Radford, Amy Guppy, Michelle C Williams, Alan Japp, John R Payne, David E Newby, Nicholas L Mills, Olga Oikonomidou, Ninian N Lang. Circulation 148 (21), 1680-1690 * (2022)
  3. Risk of chemotherapy-related amenorrhoea (CRA) in premenopausal women undergoing chemotherapy for early stage breast cancer. AK Turnbull, S Patel, C Martinez-Perez, A Rigg, O Oikonomidou. Breast cancer research and treatment 186, 237-245 (2021)
  4. Lobular breast cancer: a review. N Wilson, A Ironside, A Diana, O Oikonomidou. Frontiers in oncology 10, 591399 * (2021)
  5. Circulating tumour DNA analysis to direct therapy in advanced breast cancer (plasmaMATCH): a multicentre, multicohort, phase 2a, platform trial. Nicholas C Turner, Belinda Kingston, Lucy S Kilburn, Sarah Kernaghan, Andrew M Wardley, Iain R Macpherson, Richard D Baird, Rebecca Roylance, Peter Stephens, Olga Oikonomidou, Jeremy P Braybrooke, Mark Tuthill, Jacinta Abraham, Matthew C Winter, Hannah Bye, Michael Hubank, Heidrun Gevensleben, Ros Cutts, Claire Snowdon, Daniel Rea, David Cameron, Abeer Shaaban, Katrina Randle, Sue Martin, Katie Wilkinson, Laura Moretti, Judith M Bliss, Alistair Ring. The Lancet Oncology 21 (10), 1296-1308 * (2020)

 

Collaborations

  • Department of Oncology-Pathology, Karolinska Institutet Breast Center, Karolinska University Hospital
  • Institute of Biological Chemistry, Biophysics and Bioengineering, Nasmyth Building, Heriot-Watt University
  • Centre of Cardiovascular Science, University of Edinburgh
  • Pharma funded projects: Professor Foukakis-Department of Oncology - Pathology, Karolinska Institutet Breast Center, Karolinska University HospitalProfessor Leslie, Professor Kersaudy-Kerhoas - Institute of Biological Chemistry, Biophysics and Bioengineering, Nasmyth Building, Heriot-Watt University, Dr Henriksen - Centre of Cardiovascular Science, University of Edinburgh

Partners and Funders

  1. UKRI EPSRC (£790,000) N Leslie (CI), O Oikonomidou, Maiwenn Kersaudy-Kerhoas: MicroSNARE: Automated Enrichment Of Circulating Tumour DNA For Improved Cancer Treatment. May 2024.
  2. UKRI EPSRC (£159,891) Anitha Devadoss (CI), Olga Oikonomidou: Electrochemical Profiling of Extracellular Vesicles (EP4EVs) to monitor therapeutic efficacy of neoadjuvant chemotherapy. March 2024.
  3. NCRI M2C (£400,000) December 2022 Carlo Palmieri, Olga Oikonomidou. HER2-CNS SURVEILLANCE: A Study of the feasibility of randomising women and men with HER2 Positive metastatic breast cancer to Central Nervous System surveillance versus not.
  4. A multinational observational study characterizing utilization and effectiveness outcomes in patients with MBC receiving Abemaciclib (£90.000) Olga Oikonomidou.
  5. Real-World Clinical Outcomes Associated with First-Line Palbociclib and Aromatase Inhibitor Therapy Among Patients with HR+/HER2− Advanced Breast Cancer in Europe. (£65.000) Olga Oikonomidou. The funds were used to fund a data collector/analyst post who worked under my supervision. Paper has been accepted for publication September 2024 at the ‘’Cancer Research & Treatment’’.
  6. BCI grant (£150,000) March 2021 Olga Oikonomidou: Comprehensive profiling of clonal dynamics in longitudinal TNBC samples from early disease to metastatic setting.
  7. BCI grant (£100,000) September 2019 Arran Turnbull (CI), Olga Oikonomidou: Genomics of Endocrine Therapy Resistance – Tailoring Treatment using Personalised Genomic Analysis.
  8. Make2ndsCount (£190,000) June 2019 Olga Oikonomidou: Identification of biomarkers of response to CDK4/6 inhibitors in cfDNA sequential samples from patients with secondary breast cancer. November 2019.
  9. CRUK Early Cancer Detection initiative (£475,000) Tim Aitman (CI), Charlie Gourley, Duncan Sproul, Margaret Frame, Olga Oikonomidou. ‘’ Multiplex methylation analysis of cell-free DNA for early cancer diagnosis February 2018.
  10. NIHR National Institute for Health Research £781,000 (EME) Peter Henriksen (CI), Peter Hall, Olga Oikonomidou, Scott Semple : “Cardiac CARE: A multicentre prospective randomised open-label blinded endpoint-controlled trial of cardiac troponin guided combination angiotensin receptor blockade and beta blocker therapy to prevent cardiac toxicity in anthracycline treated breast cancer patients”, September 2017.
  11. Chief Scientist Office Research Grant (£220,883) Nicholas Leslie, Olga Oikonomidou : Novel sample preparation for improved circulating tumour DNA analysis. July 2015.
  12. MRC Confidence in Concept Scheme (£60,000) Olga Oikonomidou: Bioinformatics analysis of the NEO pilot study. 2 years from May 2014.
  13. Margaret Lee fund (£90,000) Scott Semple, Martin Denver, Olga Oikonomidou: The role of Magnetic Resonance Phosphorous Spectroscopy (31P-MRS) in detecting changes in heart function associated with the use of chemotherapy drugs used to treat breast cancer. December 2014.

 

If you are interested to make a donation to translational breast cancer research please get in touch with  

Leisa Thomas 

Senior Philanthropy Officer, Health, Medicine and Veterinary Medicine 

0131 651 4403

leisa.thomas@ed.ac.uk

www.ed.ac.uk/development-alumni

 

Scientific Themes

Breast cancer, Translational studies, Genomics, Transcriptomics, cfDNA, DNA methylation, Personalised Medicine.

Technology Expertise

Trascriptomics, ddPCR, Sanger Sequencing.

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