Professor Gerhardt Attard details
Telephone:
Location:
- University College Hospital
GMC/GDC number:
6070643
Professional background
Professor Gerhardt Attard is a clinician scientist with 20 years research experience in drug and biomarker development for advanced prostate cancer. Attard has contributed to the development of abiraterone acetate for advanced prostate cancer and has led translational studies to interrogate mechanisms of resistance to hormone therapies.
Attard has led as chief investigator several multi-center clinical trials in advanced prostate cancer and is co-chief investigator of the STAMPEDE2 clinical trial. He chairs the STAMPEDE translational research group and leads an international programme to molecularly reclassify advanced prostate cancer. He is the lead for the UCL clinical academic medical oncology training programme and provides mentorship for medical oncology fellows and trainees, laboratory-based PhD students and post-doctoral fellows: several of his trainees have received awards of excellence for their research and transitioned to independent researchers.
In September 2024, he was appointed director of the UCL Cancer Institute that has ~700 staff and researchers.
Specialties
Research interests
Attard leads a lab group based in the Cancer Institute in University College London (UCL), consisting of biologists, computational scientists and physicians. They focus on functional and genomic studies of mechanisms of treatment resistance in prostate cancer and the development of circulating and tissue biomarker-based strategies for patient molecular characterisation and stratification.
Publications
1. Development of abiraterone acetate
- i. Attard G, et al. Phase I clinical trial of a selective inhibitor of CYP17, abiraterone acetate, confirms that castration-resistant prostate cancer commonly remains hormone driven. J Clin Oncol. 2008 Oct 1;26(28):4563-71.
- ii. Attard G, et al. Selective inhibition of CYP17 with abiraterone acetate is highly active in the treatment of castration-resistant prostate cancer. J Clin Oncol. 2009 Aug 10;27(23):3742-8.
- iii. Attard G, et al. Clinical and biochemical consequences of CYP17A1 inhibition with abiraterone given with and without exogenous glucocorticoids in castrate men with advanced prostate cancer.
- J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2012 Feb;97(2):507-16. doi: 10.1210/jc.2011-2189.
- iv. Attard G, et al. Assessment of the Safety of Glucocorticoid Regimens in Combination With Abiraterone Acetate for Metastatic Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer: A Randomized, Open-label Phase 2 Study. JAMA Oncol. 2019 Aug 1;5(8):1159-1167.
- v. Attard G, et al; Systemic Therapy in Advancing or Metastatic Prostate cancer: Evaluation of Drug Efficacy (STAMPEDE) investigators. Abiraterone acetate and prednisolone with or without enzalutamide for high-risk non-metastatic prostate cancer: a meta-analysis of primary results from two randomised controlled phase 3 trials of the STAMPEDE platform protocol. Lancet. 2022 Jan 29;399(10323):447-460.
- vi. Attard G, et al. Abiraterone acetate plus prednisolone with or without enzalutamide for patients with metastatic prostate cancer starting androgen deprivation therapy: final results from two randomised phase 3 trials of the STAMPEDE platform protocol. Lancet Oncol. 2023 May;24(5):443-456.
- vii. Attard G, et al. Abiraterone Alone or in Combination With Enzalutamide in Metastatic Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer With Rising Prostate-Specific Antigen During Enzalutamide Treatment. J Clin Oncol. 2018 Sep 1;36(25):2639-2646.
- viii. Attard G, et al. Niraparib and abiraterone acetate plus prednisone for HRR-deficient metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer: a randomized phase 3 trial. Nat Med. 2025 Dec;31(12):4109-4118.
2. Interrogation of resistance to abiraterone and hormone therapies in prostate cancer
- ix. Richards J, Lim AC, Hay CW, Taylor AE, Wingate A, Nowakowska K, Pezaro C, Carreira S, Goodall J, Arlt W, McEwan IJ, de Bono JS#, Attard G#. Interactions of abiraterone, eplerenone, and prednisolone with wild-type and mutant androgen receptor: a rationale for increasing abiraterone exposure or combining with MDV3100. Cancer Res. 2012 May 1;72(9):2176-82.
- x. Romanel A*, Gasi Tandefelt D*, Conteduca V, Jayaram A, Casiraghi N, Wetterskog D, Salvi S, Amadori D, Zafeiriou Z, Rescigno P, Bianchini D, Gurioli G, Casadio V, Carreira S, Goodall J, Wingate A, Ferraldeschi R, Tunariu N, Flohr P, De Giorgi U, de Bono JS, Demichelis F&#, Attard G&#. Plasma AR and Abiraterone Resistant Prostate Cancer. Sci Transl Med. 2015 Nov 4;7(312):312re10.
- xi. Hasan AMM*, Cremaschi P*, Wetterskog D*, Jayaram A, Wong SQ, Williams S, Pasam A, Trigos A, Trujillo B, Grist E, Friedrich S, Vainauskas O, Parry M, Ismail M, Devlies W, Wingate A, Linch M, Naceur-Lombardelli C; PEACE consortium; Swanton C, Jamal-Hanjani M, Lise S, Sandhu S, Attard G. Copy number architectures define treatment-mediated selection of lethal prostate cancer clones. Nat Commun. 2023 Aug 10;14(1):4823.
3. Development of liquid biopsies for metastatic prostate cancer
- xii. Carreira S*, Romanel A*, Goodall J*, Grist E, Ferraldeschi R, Miranda S, Prandi D, Lorente D, Frenel J-S, Pezaro C, Omlin A, Nava Rodrigues D, Flohr P, Tunariu N, de Bono JS, Demichelis F&#, Attard G&#. Tumor clone dynamics in lethal prostate cancer. Sci. Transl. Med. 2014 Sep 17;6(254):254ra125.
- xiii. Conteduca V*, Wetterskog D*, Mansour Taghavi Azar Sharabiani*, Grande E*, Fernandez-Perez MP, Jayaram A, Salvi S, Castellano D, Romanel A, Lolli C, Casadio V, Gurioli G, Amadori D, Font A, Vazquez-Estevez S, González del Alba A, Mellado B, Fernandez Calvo O, Méndez-Vidal MJ, Climent MA, Duran I, Gallardo E, Rodriguez A, Santander C, Sáez MI, Puente J, Gasi Tandefelt D, Wingate A, Dearnaley D, Demichelis F, De Giorgi U#, Gonzalez-Billalabeitia E#, Attard G#. Androgen receptor gene status in plasma DNA associates with worse outcome on enzalutamide or abiraterone for castration-resistant prostate cancer: an exploratory multi-institution correlative biomarker study. Ann Oncol. 2017 Jul 1;28(7):1508-1516.
- xiv. Wu A*, Cremaschi P*, Wetterskog D*, Conteduca V, Jayaram A, Franceschini GM, Sandhu S, Wong SQ, Kleftogiannis D, Benelli M, Salvi S, Gurioli G, Buongermino Pereira M, Feber A, Wingate AM, Gonzalez-Billalebeita E, De Giorgi U, Demichelis F, Lise S, Attard G. Cancer specific methylation signatures in plasma DNA from metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. J Clin Invest. 2020 Apr 1;130(4):1991-2000.
- xv. International Publication Number WO/2021/079158. Publication Date: 29.04.2021. International Application No.PCT/GB2020/052706 International Filing Date 23.10.2020. Prostate Cancer Detection Methods. Applicants: Cancer Research Technology Limited.
- xvi. Orlando F, Romanel A, Trujillo B, Sigouros M, Wetterskog D, Quaini O, Leone G, Xiang JZ, Wingate A, Tagawa S, Jayaram A, Linch M; PEACE Consortium; Jamal-Hanjani M, Swanton C, Rubin MA, Wyatt AW, Beltran H, Attard G&#, Demichelis F&#. Allele-informed copy number evaluation of plasma DNA samples from metastatic prostate cancer patients: the PCF_SELECT consortium assay. NAR Cancer. 2022 May 27;4(2):zcac016.
- xvii. International Public Number WO 2022/258975 A1. Priority Application number GB 2108237.5. Cancer Methods. Applicants: University College London, Università degli Studi di Trento, Cornell University, The University of British Columbia.
- xviii. Brighi N, Wetterskog D, Vainauskas O, Orlando F, Ciani Y, Gurioli G, Conteduca V, Casadei C, Lolli C, Giunta EF, Bleve S, Basso U, Pierantoni F, Fornarini G, Mosca A, Nicodemo M, Banna GL, Ulivi P, Wingate A, Cremaschi P, de Giorgi U, Demichelis F, Attard G. Liquid Biopsy Identifies Taxane Resistance and Clonal Selection in Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer. Clin Cancer Res. 2025 Dec 1;31(23):4985-4995.
4. Development of biomarkers for hormone sensitive prostate cancer starting treatment intensification
- xix. Grist E, Dutey-Magni P, Parry MA, Mendes L, Sachdeva A, Proudfoot JA, Hamid AA, Ismail M, Howlett S, Friedrich S, DePaula Oliveira L, Murphy L, Brawley C, Dairo O, Lall S, Liu Y, Wetterskog D, Wingate A, Nowakowska K, Zakka L, Amos CL, Atako NB, Wang V, Rush HL, Jones RJ, Leung H, Cross WR, Gillessen S, Parker CC, Marafioti T, Urbanucci A, Fittall M, Schaeffer EM, Spratt DE, Waugh D, Powles T, Sydes MR, Feng FY, Berney DM, Parmar MKB, Clarke NW, Davicioni E, Lotan TL, Sweeney CJ, Brown LC, James ND, Attard G. Tumor transcriptome-wide expression classifiers predict treatment sensitivity in advanced prostate cancers. Cell. 2025 Oct 2;188(20):5717-5734.e10. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2025.07.042.