Richard Gray

Professor Richard Gray completed degrees in physics and statistics at the University of Oxford before beginning his medical statistics career in CTSU, where he worked for 20 years researching the causes of, and best treatments for, cardiovascular diseases and cancer. He was centrally involved in a number of international collaborative projects on the treatment of cancer, and principal investigator of two of the largest ever cancer trials, QUASAR and aTTom, looking at the treatment of colorectal and breast cancer, respectively. 

In 1996 he moved to the University of Birmingham as founding Director of the Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit, leading clinical trial, systematic review and methodological research across a wide range of diseases such as neurodegenerative disorders that are common, but less well-investigated than cancer and cardiovascular disease. Landmark studies included the AD2000 trial of donepezil and aspirin in Alzheimer’s and PD MED, comparing different drugs in Parkinson’s disease. Trials in surgical oncology are another particular focus, including FOxTROT assessing the role of pre-operative chemotherapy in colon cancer.

In 2010 he returned to CTSU as Professor of Medical Statistics. His main research areas here are breast and colorectal cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. New studies include the MADE trial testing whether minocycline delays progress of Alzheimer’s disease and the ATLAS2 trial examining antipsychotic treatment in late-onset psychosis, the first randomised controlled trial in this common condition.