The Bigger Picture

Phil Blower is Professor of Imaging Chemistry in the School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences at King's College London. He's a chemist at heart, with an interest in 'molecular imaging' using radioactive drugs.  He has more than 180 peer reviewed papers and has supervised more than 30 PhD students. However, in the first weeks of his first academic post, Phil was diagnosed with testicular cancer.

Maggie talked to Phil about his work to develop new radioactive drugs for imaging and treating cancer, his thoughts on future developments in the Nuclear Medicine field and, of course, about his experience of having cancer himself.

We'd like to thank the Public Engagement team in the Centre for Medical Engineering at King's College London for their support of this podcast.

You can follow the Bigger Picture Podcast on Twitter @BigPicPod

As a pharmacist, I've tried to steer clear of stoma care but for people living with a stoma following bowel surgery, it's an important topic which affects their everyday lives. I had the opportunity to speak to Luis about his experience of being diagnosed with colorectal cancer and how he has coped with living with a stoma in the years since his successful operation to remove cancerous polyps from his rectum.

This is a really interesting episode in our podcast series with lots of useful tips to help both medical professionals and those with experience of cancer.

Thanks for the Public Engagement team at the Centre for Medical Engineering at King's College London for their support of this podcast. Follow us on Twitter @BigPicPod

Have you ever had an FDG PET scan? Did you wonder where the FDG came from or even how the radioactive part, the Fluorine-18, was made? It probably isn't something that you have thought about but for researchers in the School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences at King's College London, a good supply of radioisotopes is crucial for our research so that we can make new radioactive drugs to diagnose and treat cancer.

In this episode Maggie spoke to Karin Nielsen who makes radioisotopes using the cyclotron based in the PET centre at St Thomas' Hospital. We find out what is involved, whether it is dangerous and what's happening with nuclear reactions going on underground close to the Houses of Parliament!

Thanks to the Public Engagement team at the Centre for Medical Engineering for funding this podcast. Please subscribe or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. You can find us on Twitter @BigPicPod or on Facebook /biggerpicturepodcast. Thank you for listening. 

Allen is a running friend or our podcast presenter, Maggie. She caught up with him after he'd completed a 10km running race in the snow last month and talked to him about how he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and about the treatment that followed.

In the podcast, Allen and Maggie talk about some of the practical and emotional problems Allen faced from getting a biopsy done, through deciding on treatment options, other health issues impacting treatment and the practicalities of the treatment itself. They also discussed a little bit about running and its benefits.

My interviewee this week is a scientist from the School of Biomedical Engineering at King's College London but his work isn't specifically about cancer, in fact, he mainly looks at the heart. However, Dr Rick Southworth has been looking at using an old radiopharmaceutical for a new purpose, to see if we can tell whether certain types of chemotherapy are causing damage to the heart.

It is well known that some chemotherapy is harmful to the heart but it doesn't affect everybody and the effects on the heart are not immediate and may only cause problems later on in life. Rick is seeking to find out if we can detect that damage early. We talk about why that is significant, what improvements that might mean to therapy and how we are working hand in hand across different disciplines to help patients with cancer.

Rick is a friend of our interviewee from the last episode, Tim Jones, and we talked about Tim's YouTube channel on the podcast. If you'd like to find that channel then the link to Surf Insight is here.

Thanks for the Public Engagement team at the Centre for Medical Engineering for funding this podcast. Please subscribe, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. You can find us on Twitter @BigPicPod or on Facebook /biggerpicturepodcast . Thanks for listening and Happy Christmas.

Tim Jones is a surfing instructor; when we heard his story we just knew we had to speak to him. Tim talked to Maggie about his diagnosis and treatment for rectal cancer and how he has coped with living with the consequences of the treatment.  In an honest and thought provoking interview, Tim shares some of the difficulties he faces as a surfing instructor who has survived rectal cancer but is still living with the affects of the treatment. He also provides useful advice about how we might better support people after cancer treatment. Tim's positivity shines through and is an inspiration. If you want to see the video that we talked about in the interview it can be found on YouTube here.

If you fancy learning to surf with Tim then here's link to his surf school in Lanzarote. 

Thanks to the Public Engagement Team in the Centre for Medical Engineering for supporting this podcast. 

Find us on Twitter @BigPicPod or Facebook /BiggerPicturePodcast. Please like and subscribe and leave a glowing review on iTunes. Thanks!

In this episode Maggie spoke to Peter Gawne about his work with radioactive nanomedicines. Peter is involved in optimising delivery of cancer drugs to the tumour site  while minimising potential side effects. In order to better understand this, he uses radioactivity to track whether delivery of the nanomedicine to the cancer is successful.

We discuss the research that Peter is doing and its potential to benefit patients, particularly women with ovarian cancer using the drug, doxorubicin, encapsulated using nanomedicine  technology. 

Thanks to the public engagement team at the Centre for Medical Engineering at King's College London for funding this podcast.

Follow us on Twitter @BigPicPod or on Facebook /biggerpicturepodcast

John says "I've been extremely lucky in life" despite having had cancer of the bladder and then being diagnosed with terminal cancer of the prostate. His positive attitude rings through this interview.

John's prostate cancer was missed and by 2012 it had already advanced to stage 3 when it was eventually picked up. He was told that he had 2 years to live. He spent about 18 months feeling sorry for himself before he found a support group which changed his life. This episode is his story. It's full of interesting and amusing anecdotes and bits of advice which will help other people finding themselves in a similar situation. 

Thanks to the Public Engagement team in the Centre for Medical Engineering at King's College London for their support for this podcast.

Twitter: @BigPicPod
Facebook: /biggerpicturepodcast

What if you could predict whether your cancer is going to respond to chemotherapy? Dr. Tim Witney's lab focus on cancer drug resistance and, in particular, trying to work out which cancers will respond to chemotherapy.

In this episode, Maggie talks to Tim about a new radiotracer called F-18 FSPG which gets transported into cancer cells and can show whether cancer has responded to chemotherapy. However, this radioactive drug has the added feature of being able to tell if the cancer is becoming resistance to that chemotherapy. Tim explains how we might be able to use F-18 FSPG to tailor treatment to patients in a personalised medicine approach.

To find out more about the Witney Lab and the exciting research going on follow this link: http://witneylab.com

If you'd like to support Chris Johnson (last episode's guest) running the London Marathon then please click here.

Thanks to the Center for Medical Engineering, Public Engagement Team, at King's College London for supporting this podcast.

Chris, a 42 year old father of 3, was diagnosed with a gastrointestinal stromal tumour (GIST) in 2019. Having undergone surgery and started chemotherapy, it was found that the cancer had spread to the liver.

Maggie spoke to Chris about his diagnosis, the steps that were taken to identify the cancer originally and the treatment that he subsequently had. There are some fascinating insights into how the diagnosis was made, the symptoms that led to Chris seeking medical help and how he responded to the treatment that he had. Also, some great tips to help overcome some of the stresses of living with cancer and all that goes with that.

Chris is so positive about his situation and it's an inspiration just listening to him. One of the ways that he has coped with living with his cancer is to start running again. As part of that, he has just completed the Great North Run (half marathon) and will take part in the London Marathon at the beginning of October. A combination of the running and the fundraising has helped Chris to remain so positive and it was really great to have the opportunity to chat to him about his cancer and about running.

Chris is raising money for Children with Cancer UK, you can sponsor him for the London Marathon at his Virgin Money Giving page  and you can follow him on Twitter @gotthegistofit

This episode is a bit unusual in that we don't have an interview with one of our scientists about the work that they are doing with radioactive drugs for cancer but we will be putting out that interview in  another episode in a couple of weeks for you to enjoy.

As ever, thanks to the Public Engagement Team at the Centre for Medical Engineering at King's College London for their support for this podcast.