Professor Mark Rutherford

I’m a Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Leicester and also hold a visiting scientist position at the Section of Cancer Surveillance International Agency for Research on Cancer. My main areas of interest are in methods for the analysis of population-based registry data.

I have been involved in a number of methodological and applied papers for comparisons of cancer survival metrics; with a focus on developing measures that are intuitive but that retain appropriate fairness when comparing across population groups (e.g. across socioeconomic groups or across countries). A researcher in our group (Sarwar Mozumder) has developed a web-based tool for understanding Cancer Survival measures: https://interpret.le.ac.uk/.

I am also involved in applying and adapting the methods used in cancer epidemiology to other disease areas. I have been involved in developing an approach for providing up-to-date estimates of risk from prognostic models and developing methods for validating prognostic models developed in competing risks settings. I also collaborate on projects in an RCT and meta-analysis setting; where interest may be in competing risks, multistate modelling or extrapolation of survival functions.

My main research interests are focussed around methods for analysing population-based cancer data including relative survival methodology and applying flexible parametric models to largescale registry data. Within this context I have been involved in a number of applied studies that look to use more intuitive measures of the burden of cancer on life expectancy at an individual level and projects where we assess the population burden of cancer. Some recent methodological work in this area includes setting measures comparing different outcomes for population groups into a causal inference framework when using the relative survival approaches that are common for population-based cancer data. I have also worked on and developed approaches for modelling and projecting cancer incidence and mortality. Some of my recent research has involved applications of relative survival approaches to cardiovascular disease and other disease contexts. Finally I have a broader interest in approaches for extrapolation of survival functions - both in the context of observational data but also in the context RCT data.

Some selected recent papers are given below:

Stannard R, Lambert PC, Andersson TM, Khan S, Lyratzopoulos G, Syriopoulou E, Rutherford MJ. Estimating the impact of cancer diagnosis on life expectancy by stage at diagnosis: population-based estimates for a range of cancer sites in England. BMJ Oncology. 2026;5:e000999. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjonc-2025-000999

Paul C. Lambert, Therese M.L. Andersson, Tor Åge Myklebust, Bjørn Møller, Mark J. Rutherford; Monitoring Temporal Trends in Cancer Survival: Choosing Appropriate Standards When Accounting for Age and Other-Cause Mortality Variation Over Time. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 1 July 2025; 34 (7): 1141–1148. https://doi.org/10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-24-1727

Latimer, N.R., Rutherford, M.J. Mixture and Non-mixture Cure Models for Health Technology Assessment: What You Need to Know. PharmacoEconomics42, 1073–1090 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40273-024-01406-7

My full Google Scholar profile is available here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=SAx4X_0AAAAJ&hl=en

 

I am keen to offer supervision of PhD students in a number of areas that align to my research interests which are laid out in fuller detail on the Research tab and Publications tab. In general I supervise student looking at survival analysis methods including extensions to competing risks and multistate models. I am also keen to supervise methodological and applied projects using largescale population based data.

The majority of my teaching is on the MSc in Medical Statistics. I teach on a few sessions for the fundamentals in medical statistics module on a teaching week for the statistical modelling module and a further teaching week in the Epidemiology module. I also supervise summer projects for the MSc Medical Statistics course. Further to this I make other smaller contributions in terms of teaching to undergraduate and postgraduate modules across the College of Life Sciences including further supervision of undergraduate dissertations.

My main area of expertise is the calculation and presentation of cancer survival statistics. This includes undertaking and interpreting international comparisons of cancer survival. I have further expertise in approaches for understanding the reasons for differences in cancer survival outcomes seen across countries and population groups within countries (e.g. groups defined by socioeconomic status).

BSc MSc PhD FHEA.