Dr. Susanne Flach is a clinician scientist, currently working at the Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Head & Neck Surgery at the Hospital of the University of Munich. She has got a background in molecular biology having completed a BSc in Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Heidelberg and an MSc in Molecular Medicine at Imperial College London as well as a PhD in Pathology at the University of Cambridge. She went on to obtain a medical degree from the University of Oxford and has been working as a clinician since then. Her research interests are in cancer genomics, particularly finding new molecular tumour markers for patients with head and neck cancer. She is currently running a liquid biopsy study where they are trying to detect early tumour recurrences in the blood by looking for circulating tumour DNA.
I want good tumour markers to detect residual disease and disease recurrence in patients with head and neck cancer. I want this, because overall survival of patients with head and neck cancer is still very poor. I can do this, because I am part of a team running a clinical study to detect circulating tumour DNA in the blood of patients with head and neck cancer as well as trying to understand the evolution of this disease.