Prof Bass Hassan is a Professor of Medical Oncology, leads a research group at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, and is the T. O. Ogunlesi Senior Research Fellow at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. He was born in Scotland and brought up in the Middle East and Maidenhead, Berkshire. He trained in clinical medicine in Merton College, University of Oxford in the 1980’s, and completed a DPhil (Brasenose College, Wellcome Fellow) at the Sir William Dunn School in 1994 in Peter Cook’s laboratory. After a period in Cambridge and Southampton training in Medical Oncology, he returned to work on genes that regulate embryonic development with Chris Graham in the Department of Zoology (1987, Cancer Research UK Senior Clinical Research Fellow). He was appointed Professor of Oncology in Bristol in 2003 before joining the CRUK Medical Oncology Unit at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in 2007. His research interests concern genes and proteins that regulate both embryonic and tumour growth.
Bass splits his time running his basic science laboratory at the Dunn School and treating patients with rare cancers of bone and soft tissue (sarcoma). He is deeply committed to research that may benefit patients, and is currently developing novel therapeutic proteins and clinical trials with Cancer Research Technology and European Bone Sarcoma Centres, respectively. Bass is a Consultant Medical Oncologist at the Oxford cancer centre and Nuffield orthopaedic centre.