Associate Professor Malcolm West

Associate Professor Malcolm West has completed an NIHR-funded doctoral research programme in prehabilitation, perioperative surgical risk stratification, and mitochondrial energetics leading the first UK prehabilitation study in locally advanced rectal cancer patients. He was then appointed as an NIHR academic clinical fellow in Wessex (NIHR ACF, 2014-2016) and subsequently an NIHR clinical lecturer (NIHR ACL, 2016-2020). He completed specialist training in surgery in August 2020 (FRCS 2019, FEBS(Colo) 2023). 
 
Malcolm is a senior investigator for the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre. He leads a research programme, aimed at improving perioperative and long-term outcomes in patients undergoing major surgery. He interrogates the variability around the perioperative period utilising objective risk stratification and intervenes using tailored multimodal prehabilitation. His research interests include interrogating the pathophysiological mechanisms of changing fitness, nutrition, body composition, frailty and mitochondrial function with cancer therapies and the implementation of prehabilitation interventions to rescue and improve metabolic health, tumour outcomes and physiological resilience.
 
Malcolm is an Associate Professor in Colorectal Surgery and Prehabilitation Medicine at the University of Southampton, and a consultant colorectal and complex cancer surgeon at University Hospitals Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, specialising in the treatment of colorectal cancer including primary, advanced, and recurrent cancers.
 
He is currently the surgical sub-speciality lead for the Clinical Research Network, Wessex and serves as the co-chair of the NIHR Research for Patient Benefit programme for southern England. He has a keen interest in education and currently supervises numerous PhD, MD, MMedSc and BMedSc students at the University of Southampton, where he is the MMedSc Deputy Module Lead for Research and the Southampton NIHR Clinical Academic Training Programme Lead.