Louise Brown, Professor of Medical Statistics and Clinical Trials

Louise joined the MRC Clinical Trials Unit as a senior statistician in March 2012 and works mainly on cancer trials, particularly those in stratified medicine and biomarker clinical validation. She focusses much of her time as the Project Lead for FOCUS4, a molecularly stratified adaptive trial programme in advanced colorectal cancer and Project Lead for STAMPEDE, a large adaptive clinical trial testing multiple treatments in advanced prostate cancer. She leads the statistical analysis for a number of stratified medicine projects in cancer including the SCORT and RE-IMAGINE MRC Stratified Medicine Consortia Programmes. She has an interest in diagnostic studies and led completion of the PROMIS study, which investigated the role of MRI in the diagnosis of prostate cancer.

She originally trained in mechanical engineering but after completing a Master’s degree in medical statistics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine she went on to complete her PhD in statistics at Imperial College London. Prior to working at the MRC CTU, she worked as a statistician at Imperial College, primarily in cardiovascular surgery trials and with a particular interest in abdominal aortic aneurysm.

Selected publications

 Brown, L. C., Fisher, D., Adams, R., Seligmann, J., Seymour, M., Kaplan, R., . . . Maughan, T. S. (2022). Molecular selection of therapy in metastatic colorectal cancer: the FOCUS4 molecularly stratified RCT. Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation, 9(9), 1-92. doi:10.3310/htnb6908

Attard, G., Murphy, L., Clarke, N. W., Cross, W., Jones, R. J., Parker, C. C., . . . Systemic Therapy in Advancing or Metastatic Prostate cancer: Evaluation of Drug Efficacy (STAMPEDE) investigators. (2021). 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. The Lancet. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02437-5

Ahmed, H. U., El-Shater Bosaily, A., Brown, L. C., Gabe, R., Kaplan, R., Parmar, M. K., . . . Emberton, M. (2017). Diagnostic accuracy of multi-parametric MRI and TRUS biopsy in prostate cancer (PROMIS): A paired validating confirmatory study. The Lancet. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(16)32401-1

Greenhalgh, R. M., Brown, L. C., Powell, J. T., Thompson, S. G., Epstein, D., Sculpher, M. J., & Investi, U. K. E. V. A. R. T. (2010). Endovascular versus Open Repair of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm. NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE, 362(20), 1863-1871. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa0909305

Greenhalgh, R. M., Brown, L. C., Powell, J. T., Thompson, S. G., Epstein, D., & Investig, U. K. E. V. A. R. T. (2010). Endovascular Repair of Aortic Aneurysm in Patients Physically Ineligible for Open Repair. NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE, 362(20), 1872-1880. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa0911056

Research Interests

• Colorectal cancer
• Prostate cancer
• Stratified medicine
• Diagnostic studies
• Trial Design

Research Areas

• Cancer
• Methodology
• Other conditions