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Specialises in

• Haematological

Offers

• Face-to-face consultations
• Video and telephone consultations

About me

Prof Ray Powles trained at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and first worked as a junior doctor in 1965 on a leukaemia unit at a time when the disease was virtually untreatable, all patients succumbing usually in days or a few weeks. He then moved to the Royal Marsden in 1969 where he worked until 2004. He initially was involved in defining the use of active specific immunotherapy for acute myeloblastic leukaemia.at a time of the Nixon era of looking for immunological approaches to ‘beat cancer’. As a part of this programme he was given the fourth blood Cell Separator world-wide costing the equivalent of £500k to make the vaccine, showed, and reported in 1972. the first use of this machine for plasma exchange in myeloma. He was subsequently invited by Jan Waldenstrom to give a seminar in Malmo in 1972. In 1973 he led the team responsible for the first successful allogeneic Bone Marrow Transplant in Europe undertaken in 1973. In the early 80’s he was also the first to use cyclosporine and parental acyclovir and took both of these drugs through from first patient to approval, prior to use in the US. He, with Tim MacElwain, reported the first use of autologous Stem Cell transplant for myeloma in Lancet in 1983. He was at the forefront of the use of haemopoetic growth factors and was particularly involved in the licensing of GM-CSF. All of these developments have for three decades been part of routine evidence based clinical practice. Following the untimely death of Tim McElwain he ran the Royal Marsden Hospital Myeloma Unit, and created the RMH prospective myeloma data-base that was the basis of consistently allowing the RMH to dominate peer-reviewed presentations at ASH most years.

He now runs a Haemato-oncology Unit in the private sector at Cancer Centre London, at Parkside, Wimbledon.

He was a Panel members of the Independent Reconfiguration Panel from 2003 to 2013, an advisory non-departmental public body (NDPB) that advises the Secretary of State for Health on contested proposed reconfigurations.

In 2002 Ray he founded and became Chairman of the European Blood and Marrow Transplant (EBMT) Nuclear Accident Committee, a network of 500 centres throughout Europe that has harmonized EU and US care and training if a large radiation incident occurred, particularly if terrorist initiated. He is a member since 2009 of the Emergency Preparedness Clinical Leadership Advisory Group (EPCLAG) of the UK Dept of Health, to advise on Radiation Emergencies

Ray was a trustee until recently of the health policy parliamentary advice group, the New Health Network, and was a Member in 2002 of the Cabinet Office Public sector team for streamlining Healthcare Inspections. He also was a member of the 2008 NHS Leadership Workstream panel

Between 2000 and 2008 he was a Director, and Board member of the Swiss Biopharmaceutical Company BioPartners, which became the first Company ( simultaneously with Sandoz) to have approved by EMEA a biosimilar drug hGh growth hormone.

He formed and was the first Chairman until Dec 2010 of the American Society of Haematology (ASH) Scientific Committee for Plasma Cell Biology, having previously been Chairman of the ASH Haemopoetic Growth Factor Scientific Committee. He is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the International Myeloma Working Group.
He was given a Pride of Britain Lifetime Achievement award 2013

Areas of interest

Leukaemia; Myeloma; Haematological oncology

Medical secretaries

• Gill Flack
• Nuffield Health, Cancer Centre London 49 Parkside London SW19 5NB
• 07768 165882
• myeloma@clara.co.uk