Professor of Sports and Nutritional Science

Professor Robert Thomas is a Consultant Oncologist at Bedford and Addenbrooke's Hospitals, a clinical teacher at Cambridge University and visiting Professor of Sports and Nutritional Science at the University of Bedfordshire.

He is lead of a Lifestyle and Cancer Research Unit conducting designing and conducting government backed studies evaluating the impact of exercise, diet and natural therapies. In collaboration with The Universities of Bedfordshire, Southern California, Cambridge and Glasgow, this unit has published over 100 peer reviewed scientific papers (see list). This has included the worlds largest randomised controlled trial of a polyphenol rich nutritional supplement in patient with cancer (the Pomi-T trial) and the randomised evaluation of a topical therapy to prevent chemotherapy induced nail damage (the polybalm study). More recently, he lead the analysis of the 155,000 patient data set (PLCO) which has linked sugar with an increased cancer and tea and brocolli with cancer prevention.

In 2010, he designed and lead the implementation of the UK's cancer exercise rehabilitation course and Qualification with Macmillan and Skills Active. In 2019, he wrote the book “Keep Healthy after Cancer”, and remains medical advisor for the lifestyle and cancer website Cancernet.co.uk, the general lifetsyle site keep-healthy.com and writes a popular health blog in partnership with exercise professionals and nutritionists. For these contributions he has been awarded The British Oncology Association’s “Oncologist of the Year” and The Royal College of Radiologist medal.

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