Syed Hussain

Professor Hussain graduated from Dow Medical College Karachi in 1994. He completed his general medical professional training in UK. He did his Doctorate in Oncology from University of Birmingham. He completed his medical oncology training in Birmingham, United Kingdom and received his certification and specialist registration in medical oncology.
Professor Hussain is Professor and Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology at the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. His major areas of interest are management of urological cancers, clinical trials, early drug development and translational medicine. He has set up several clinical trials from early phase to late phase studies during his career. His work on organ preservation in bladder cancer moved all the way from an early phase I study (Hussain et al Annals of Oncology 2001) to phase II efficacy study (Hussain et al BJC 2004) that led to a Cancer Research UK funded study BC2001 trial that was reported in New England Journal of Medicine (James, Hussain, Hall et al April 2012). This study has now changed the standard of care for patients with muscle invasive bladder cancer opting for organ preservation treatment globally. He has tailored split dose cisplatin regimen that has led to expand the spectrum of patients receiving cisplatin-based chemotherapy in bladder cancer (Hussain et al BJC 2004). He is a principal investigator of several studies in urological cancers. He was chief investigator of a national randomised placebo-controlled phase II neo-adjuvant study (NEOBLADE) in muscle invasive bladder cancer. He has served as a chief investigator of various early phase clinical trials, and translational studies. He is a chief investigator of a first in human window of opportunity study (INVEST) investigating the role of intravesical/intratumoral atezolizumab in patients with bladder cancer undergoing curative cystectomy. This is sponsored by STH and funded by Roche. He is also chief investigator of an international window of opportunity trial SOGUG NEOWIN investigating the role of erdafitinib and cetrelimab in FGF mutant bladder cancer patients undergoing curative cystectomy. This is jointly led by Hussain (UK), with Andrea Necchi (Italy), Yohann Loriot (France) and Guillermo Velasco (Spain) as other co-chief investigators. This study is funded by Janssen. He has authored over 135 peer-reviewed publications including 4 book chapters in textbooks of oncology. His Google scholar H-index is 45 with over 13,100 citations (July 2024). He has published in high impact journals including New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Lancet Oncology, JAMA, JAMA Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology, European Urology, Annals of Oncology, Nature Communications, Clinical Cancer Research, British Journal of Cancer. He has been an invited speaker to number of national and international meetings and have delivered over 120 invited lectures. He has secured funding from cancer charities, national funding bodies and industries of over £20 million.
Professor Hussain was the member of NCRI Bladder and Renal group and Chair of the NCRI- Advanced Bladder Cancer sub-group in his national role. Professor Hussain was the expert witness to NICE on successful technology appraisals of Atezolizumab (2017), Avelumab (2021) and Nivolumab in Bladder cancer (2022). He is working with NICE in technology appraisal of Erdafitinib ( 2024) and Enfortumab Vedotin ( 2025).