Annamaria Minicozzi

Annamaria Minicozzi is a Consultant Colorectal and Peritoneal Surgeon at the Royal London Hospital within Barts Health NHS Trust, and a Clinical Reader in Colorectal Surgery at the Blizard Institute, Queen Mary University of London. She leads colorectal cancer surgery and the colorectal cancer multidisciplinary team (MDT), and established and now leads the Multidisciplinary Peritoneal Oncology service at Barts, launched in 2020.

Ms Minicozzi completed her higher surgical training at Verona University Hospital and undertook two prestigious international fellowships: an Organ Preservation/Watch & Wait fellowship in rectal cancer in São Paulo, Brazil, and a fellowship in advanced and recurrent rectal cancer at Karolinska Hospital. She was awarded a PhD in 2010 for her work on multimodal imaging in colorectal cancer and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 2014.

Following general surgery training, she pursued three highly specialist colorectal fellowships. These included complex colorectal cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, polyposis and inherited cancer surgery at St Mark’s Hospital; complex inflammatory bowel disease and intestinal failure surgery at the Royal London Hospital through a Royal College of Surgeons Fellowship; and advanced minimally invasive colorectal cancer surgery at Peterborough City Hospital.

Ms Minicozzi was first appointed as a Consultant Colorectal and Peritoneal Surgeon at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust in 2016, where she delivered a high-volume practice in complex colorectal cancer surgery, including cytoreductive surgery (CRS), heated intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC), and exenterative procedures. She joined the Royal London Hospital in 2018, becoming Colorectal Cancer and MDT Lead, and now also serves as GI Early Diagnostic Lead across Barts Health, representing the Trust within the North East London Cancer Alliance.

Her clinical and academic interests centre on advanced and innovative treatments for complex colorectal cancer. She has led the establishment of a CRS & HIPEC service for peritoneal metastases arising from colorectal and appendiceal cancers, and her research includes single-cell sequencing in rectal cancer to support organ preservation strategies for patients achieving a clinical complete response after neoadjuvant therapy. She is the Principal Investigator of a national randomised trial evaluating pressurised intraperitoneal aerosolised chemotherapy (PIPAC) for patients with extensive peritoneal metastases unsuitable for conventional treatments.

Ms Minicozzi has published widely in leading surgical journals, contributed to multiple surgical textbooks, and is an invited international lecturer on complex cancer surgery. She has secured numerous research grants and continues to combine high-level clinical practice with impactful translational and clinical research.