Dr Kate Nixon

Cancer is a disease that spans the breadth of human existence and is a leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for nearly 1 million deaths in 2020 [ref]. In a world where the population is increasing and aging [ref], a global scientific priority is to develop effective and low-cost cancer treatments with widespread access. Radiotherapy is a well-established cost-efficient cancer treatment and, either alone or paired with other options such as surgery or chemotherapy, is a mainstay of cancer therapy. The goal of curative radiotherapy is to kill the tumour cells, however, radiation dose is limited by the need to protect non-cancer tissues in close proximity to the tumour. Radiosensitizing agents can be used to enhance radiation-driven death of the targeted cancer cells while minimizing damage to healthy tissue. There is an urgent call for the discovery and implementation of new, efficient radiosensitizers. Given the extremely lengthy process to take a molecule from ‘bench to bedside’[ref], it is desirable to study potential compounds in silico to characterise the properties and behaviours that lead to radiosensitivity. As quantum chemical calculations increase in sophistication, it becomes increasingly important to carefully evaluate these, through the most direct and sensitive experimental measurements possible, to ensure properties predicted by such calculations are reliable. Electron momentum spectroscopy (EMS) measures the closest observable to the wavefunction and provides a means to perform a stringent evaluation of the quality of such calculations.

• To implement a new experimental programme in order to investigate the electronic structure of thermally labile biomolecules • To develop a new technique to achieve target beams of in-tact nucleobases to allow electron scattering measurements from these molecules for the first time • To deliver accurate data for evaluation of quantum chemical models that describe the physico-chemical properties of molecules.