Professional background

Dr Mendes is a consultant clinical oncologist specialising in the delivery of radiotherapy, including proton radiotherapy, and chemotherapy in head and neck cancer patients, working closely with the head and neck surgical team and the Eastman Dental Hospital.

Her oncological training was at the Royal Marsden Hospital and St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London.

Her main interest is in technical radiotherapy and was the lead for implementing IMRT and stereotactic radiotherapy at UCLH.

She lectures internationally on head and neck cancer and is involved with post graduate education. She has been an examiner for the Royal College of Radiologists and is a supervisor for head and neck AHP prescribing.

Research interests

Dr Mendes participates in departmental research activity and has been a principal investigator on several national head and neck trials and well as contributing to projects within the local network.

She has recently collaborated with Google Deepmind on the head and neck anatomical study.

Her research thesis was on the development of vaccines in cancer.

Publications

  1. Utility of diffusion MRI characteristics of cervical lymph nodes as disease classifier between patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and healthy volunteers. Papoutsaki MV, Sidhu HS, Dikaios N, Singh S, Atkinson D, Kanber B, Beale T, Morley S, Forster M, Carnell D, Mendes R, Punwani S. NMR Biomed. 2021 Nov;34(11):e4587. doi: 10.1002/nbm.4587. Epub 2021 Jul 8.
  2. Clinically Applicable Segmentation of Head and Neck Anatomy for Radiotherapy: Deep Learning Algorithm Development and Validation Study. Nikolov S, Blackwell S, Zverovitch A, Mendes R, Livne M, De Fauw J, Patel Y, Meyer C, Askham H, Romera-Paredes B, Kelly C, Karthikesalingam A, Chu C, Carnell D, Boon C, D'Souza D, Moinuddin SA, Garie B, McQuinlan Y, Ireland S, Hampton K, Fuller K, Montgomery H, Rees G, Suleyman M, Back T, Hughes CO, Ledsam JR, Ronneberger O. J Med Internet Res. 2021 Jul 12;23(7):e26151. doi: 10.2196/26151.
  3. Rapid advances in auto-segmentation of organs at risk and target volumes in head and neck cancer. Kosmin M, Ledsam J, Romera-Paredes B, Mendes R, Moinuddin S, de Souza D, Gunn L, Kelly C, Hughes CO, Karthikesalingam A, Nutting C, Sharma RA. Radiother Oncol. 2019 Jun;135:130-140. doi: 10.1016/j.radonc.2019.03.004. Epub 2019 Mar 22.
  4. Results of a multicentre randomised controlled trial of cochlear-sparing intensity-modulated radiotherapy versus conventional radiotherapy in patients with parotid cancer (COSTAR; CRUK/08/004). Nutting CM, Morden JP, Beasley M, Bhide S, Cook A, De Winton E, Emson M, Evans M, Fresco L, Gollins S, Gujral D, Harrington K, Joseph M, Lemon C, Luxon L, van den Blink Q, Mendes R, Miah A, Newbold K, Prestwich R, Robinson M, Sanghera P, Simpson J, Sivaramalingam M, Srihari NN, Sydenham M, Wells E, Witts S, Hall E; COSTAR Investigators. Eur J Cancer. 2018 Nov;103:249-258. doi: 10.1016/j.ejca.2018.08.006. Epub 2018 Oct 1.
  5. A stratified analysis of the perioperative outcome of 17623 patients undergoing major head and neck cancer surgery in England over 10 years: Towards an Informatics-based Outcomes Surveillance Framework. Nouraei SA, Mace AD, Middleton SE, Hudovsky A, Vaz F, Moss C, Ghufoor K, Mendes R, O'Flynn P, Jallali N, Clarke PM, Darzi A, Aylin P. Clin Otolaryngol. 2017 Feb;42(1):11-28. doi: 10.1111/coa.12649. Epub 2016 Apr 26.
  6. Synthetic lethality and PARP-inhibitors in oral and head & neck cancer. Forster M, Mendes R, Fedele S. Curr Pharm Des. 2012;18(34):5431-41. doi: 10.2174/138161212803307608.