Mandeep Sagoo (Medicine 1992) is head of the ocular oncology service at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, which has a long-standing connection with Gonville & Caius College.
The Moorfields ocular oncology service, which diagnoses and treats cancers in or around the eye, was established by Hyla Stallard (Medicine 1919), who enjoyed an impressive dual career as an athlete and an ophthalmologist. Alongside fellow Caian Harold Abrahams (Law 1919), Stallard ran for Great Britain at the 1924 Paris Olympics, where he won the bronze medal in the 1500 metres and finished fourth in the 800 metres despite a fractured foot. Following his athletic endeavours, he became a surgeon at Moorfields and at St Bartholomew’s Hospital (Barts). There he pioneered brachytherapy for the eye, a technique whereby a radioactive seed is placed inside a wax mould on the outside of the eye to target tumours with localised radiation. This led Stallard to found the first specialist ocular oncology clinic, which today still operates between Moorfields and Barts.
Stallard was succeeded as head of this service by another Caian, John Hungerford (Natural Sciences 1963), who pioneered a chemotherapy treatment for retinoblastoma, an eye cancer in children, in addition to continuing to refine Stallard’s brachytherapy technique. The service is now run by Mandeep, who took over when Hungerford retired in 2009.
In addition to working as a consultant like his predecessors, Mandeep also holds an academic position as University College London’s first Professor of Ocular Oncology. Among an impressive range of research accomplishments, he headed the team that printed the world’s first 3D-printed ocular prosthetic and was invited to give a TED Talk on this work. He also undertakes research into patient outcomes, molecular studies of eye cancers (in collaboration with the University of Cambridge’s Wellcome Sanger Institute) and the use of Artificial Intelligence in imaging the eye to find tumours.
When he entered the field of ocular oncology, Mandeep was not initially aware of its strong connection to Caius. Early in his career, he attended a talk delivered by Hungerford, who spotted the Caius tie that Mandeep was wearing and revealed that both himself and Stallard had studied at Caius. Mandeep is very pleased to be a part of Caius’s legacy in treating eye cancers at Moorfields, and he looks back fondly on his time at the College, where he completed the MB/PhD programme.
“I’m so proud of Caius; it was such a privilege being there,” he says. “It’s all very special – the surroundings, the atmosphere, the learning that you experience, the friends that you make. Having those connections, that network of peers, is fantastic. We recently had a small ophthalmology conference, run by another ophthalmologist and Caius graduate, Matthew Burton (Medicine 1989), and he held it in Harvey Court. We had a wonderful time coming back.”
The ocular oncology service at Moorfields continues to celebrate its Caian founder. Stallard’s Olympic bronze medal is on display in the Moorfields Museum in the Joint Library of Ophthalmology, and John Hungerford established a biennial Stallard Medal (pictured right), the highest award that can be given in the field ocular oncology.
Mandeep says: “We are very proud of Stallard because he laid the foundations of our subject. He developed radiotherapy for the eye, he wrote a seminal textbook on the subject, and he did a lot of the groundwork for the treatment and operations that we currently still use.”
