Sarah has been Associate Professor of Medical Oncology in Department of Oncology since 2015. She leads Oxford’s Early Phase Trials (Cancer) Clinical Unit, is the local Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC) lead and runs a laboratory studying mRNA dysregulation. She has been chief or principal investigator for a number of national and international clinical studies of novel cancer therapeutics. Sarah undertook her medical training in London, in Cambridge and the Royal Marsden Hospital. She was awarded a CRUK Junior Clinician Scientist PhD fellowship in 1999 at Cambridge University and later held a Clinical Fellowship at the Institute of Cancer Research’s Drug Development Unit. From 2006 -2015 she was Senior Lecturer at Imperial College where she founded and ran their Early Phase Cancer Trials unit. Sarah sits on a number of committees where she reviews the process by which new cancer drugs enter clinical trials and recognises that early clinical positioning is crucial to a study’s success. This is the focus of her talk.