Professor Kevin Harrington gave his Semon Lecture on the 5th of November 2021 at the Royal Society of Medicine. He spoke about the improvements made in radiation oncology, oncology, and surgery in treating head and neck cancers. After explaining the basics of cancer immunotherapy, he went on to discuss various clinical trials and the treatment improvements that they had seen. Harrington suggested that a combination of both immunotherapy and surgery was likely to be the way forward at the moment, but that there were so many receptors with drug candidates that immunotherapy may well provide a cure for various cancers in the next 20-30 years.
Kevin Joseph Harrington graduated from St Bartholomew’s in 1988 and is now a consultant in clinical oncology at the Royal Marsden Hospital and St George’s Hospital. He has published over 500 articles and numerous book chapters throughout his career. As part of this, he has secured millions of pounds in research funding for numerous projects and sits on a multitude of committees and advisory groups. Harrington has received many awards and prizes, including the BAHNO President’s Award for Head and Neck Cancer Research, NIHR Senior Investigator Award, and the Frank Ellis Medal and Rohan Williams Medal of the Royal College of Radiologists.