Story
Antonio Rullan, 2017 intake Crick doctoral clinical fellow, Erik Sahai's lab, now clinical research fellow and medical oncologist at the Royal Marsden Hospital/ICR and visiting scientist at the Crick.
I have always had a 'crush' on science. During my undergraduate, I was involved with a cancer research project and enjoyed it so much that I thought about going into a PhD just after finishing medical school. However, I decided to start with my clinical training.
Before coming to the Crick, I worked for five years as a medical Oncology trainee in Barcelona. After finishing my specialty training, I decided that I wanted to do a PhD.
The Crick offered a fantastic opportunity with a well-defined programme and the opportunity to develop a translational project between a lab at the Crick and a clinical department at the ICR/Royal Marsden.
The environment at the Crick is amazing, and you can feel that the people working here are passionate about what they do. This enthusiasm is contagious and helps to do your best.
Starting to work in the lab full-time is not easy, but everybody has been very helpful, and it is both challenging and rewarding to hypothesise, design an experiment and do it.
The environment at the Crick is amazing, and you can feel that the people working here are passionate about what they do. This enthusiasm is contagious and helps to do your best.
After finishing my PhD, I would like to look for a position in which I can be involved in starting and developing translational research, from either a clinical or a more lab-based point of view.
Update, spring 2023
Since completing my PhD I have continued to develop my aspiration to become a clinician scientist. I hold a visiting scientist position at the Francis Crick to finish up and publish some of the projects I started during my PhD. My current position is at the Royal Marsden and the ICR, where I combine lab work as a postdoc with clinical work in the Head and Neck research team looking after patients in clinical trials.
Update August 2025
Since May 2024, I have been working at The Institute of Immunity and Transplantation (UCL) and The Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead as a clinical academic. I am part of the early phase trials team, endeavouring to grow the portfolio of early phase and experimental medicine trials. At the university, I am collaborating with other scientists on translational projects related to cancer immunology. I still keep close links with the Crick, where I work in projects with my own lab and other PIs.
One of these collaborations has resulted in a proposal for the Crick PhD for clinician’s program, and I am very excited to become a clinical supervisor for a clinician doing their PhD at the Crick. As I went through the program myself, it feels like a great way to close the circle.
