Prof. dr. Malcolm West

Biography

Associate Professor Malcolm West was appointed to the University of Southampton in 2022 as an Associate Professor in Colorectal Surgery and Prehabilitation Medicine. He is also an Honorary Consultant Colorectal and Advanced Malignancy Surgeon at University Hospitals Southampton NHS Foundation Trust.

Previously, he was an NIHR clinical academic in Liverpool and the Wessex region, completing a PhD in exercise physiology, perioperative risk stratification, and prehabilitation for advanced rectal cancer. He later held an NIHR Academic Fellowship and a Lectureship in Surgery at Southampton. He completed specialist training with the prestigious Royal College of Surgeons Senior Fellowship in complex and robotic colorectal cancer surgery at St Mark’s Hospital, London.

Malcolm leads a translational research programme focused on improving perioperative and long-term outcomes in major cancer surgery. He is a senior investigator with the Fit-4-Surgery Consortium and NIHR Southampton BRC Perioperative and Critical Care theme. His clinical trials explore perioperative risk assessment and multimodal prehabilitation to improve resilience and outcomes after cancer treatment. His research interests include the impact of prehabilitation on fitness, body composition, tumour microenvironment, and immune ecology.

He is the incoming co-chair of the NIHR Research for Patient Benefit programme (Southern England) and the Wessex Cancer Alliance Lead for Early Diagnostics in Colorectal Cancer. He also supervises multiple postgraduate research students at Southampton and across the UK.