Professor Stuart McIntosh is a Professor of Surgical Oncology at Queen’s University in Belfast, and a Consultant Breast Surgeon at Belfast City Hospital.

He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1993 and completed Basic Surgical Training in the South of Scotland, followed by a period as a Clinical Research Fellow in Glasgow and Cambridge. Higher Surgical Training in the North-East of Scotland was followed by a National Training Interface Group Oncoplastic Surgery Fellowship in Leeds.

Stuart returned to Aberdeen as a Consultant Breast Surgeon in 2005, before moving to Belfast in 2009. His growing research interests resulted in a move to an academic role in Queen’s University Belfast in 2015, and he became Professor in August 2023.

His clinical research interests are largely centered around neoadjuvant therapy and treatment de-escalation in early breast cancer. He is currently the Chief Investigator of the UK NIHR HTA-funded SMALL trial, a phase III multicentre randomised trial comparing standard surgery with vacuum-assisted excision for the treatment of small, good prognosis screen-detected breast cancers. He also has surgical leadership roles in several other ongoing UK systemic therapy de-escalation trials, including OPTIMA and HER2-RADiCAL. He co-led the recent BIG-NCTN PRECEDENT project to develop a core outcome set to improve the reporting of locoregional therapies in clinical trials of neoadjuvant systemic therapy.

His translational research interests lie in the area of the DNA damage immune response in breast cancer, and within Queen’s University is a joint holder of a Cancer Research UK Programme Foundation Award grant for this work.

Nationally, he has held a number of research leadership roles, including as Chair of the UK UK Breast Cancer Clinical Studies Group, which is responsible for overseeing the strategic development of the UK breast cancer clinical trials portfolio. Until recently, he was the Royal College of Surgeons Breast Surgical Specialty Lead, and he is also currently Chair of the British Breast Group. Closer to home, he is the Clinical Director of the Northern Ireland Cancer Trials Network, responsible for overseeing the delivery of cancer clinical research across five regional cancer hospitals to the 1.8 million population of Northern Ireland.