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: @BigPicPodFacebook: /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.comIf 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 @gotthegistofitThis 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. 

Around 55,000 women and 370 men are diagnosed with breast cancer every year in the UK, about 15% of these are diagnosed with lobular breast cancer, but what is lobular breast cancer?In this month's episode, Maggie spoke to Darlaine Honey about her experience of being diagnosed with lobular breast cancer, the difficulties that she faced and her drive to find better management for patients with this type of cancer. We discussed whether it might be possible to use some existing radiotracers to look at whether the disease has spread to other areas of the body and how the disease is currently managed. Breast cancer can spread to the bones and, although there are radiotracers currently being used to find these metastases, at the School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences at King's College London, we are looking at improving these tracers to get a more accurate picture of whether their are metastases and where they are. Dr George Keeling is working on a 'kit' which can be used to prepare one such radio tracer very easily and without the need for expensive equipment. I spoke to George about his research and about how his 'kit' is a little bit like instant noodles. To find out more about Darlaine's story see here or hereThis podcast was generously supported by the Public Engagement funding from the Centre for Medical Engineering at King's College London. 

In the first part of this episode of The Bigger Picture, Maggie talks to Vincent Kearney about his experience of being diagnosed and treated for Hodgkin's lymphoma. Vincent explains how he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma and the treatment that he underwent. He also gives a nice explanation of what it's like having an FDG scan in the PET centre. In the second part of the podcast, Maggie spoke to Dr Sam Terry, who works in the area of radiobiology. We find out what radiobiology is and what we might learn from Dr Terry's work to improve treatment of cancer using a different class of radioactive drugs that kill cancer cells from the inside and leaves normal tissue unharmed. There's certainly a lot to think about from both interviews and hopefully messages that we can take from them to improve the quality and impact of our research.Thanks to the Centre for Medical Engineering at King's College London for the Public Engagement funding for this podcast. 

Ovarian cancer can creep up on you unexpectedly. Maxine had symptoms similar to a pre-existing condition and didn’t know that she had cancer. We talked about how she got her diagnosis, the symptoms she experienced and what had happened since that initial diagnosis.We also talk to Prof James Spicer who heads up an experimental cancer medicines unit at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in London. We discuss different types of treatment including a novel approach to using antibodies to treat ovarian cancer.Finally, we talk to Dr Francis Man about how radiolabelling the antibody that Prof Spicer is using, may allow us to better understand how the antibody is working and whether it is going to the parts of the body that we expect. The symptoms of ovarian cancer can be difficult to detect as Maxine found. Ovacome have a nice easy way to remember what to look out  for called BEAT. B is for bloating, E is for a change in eating habits, A is for abdominal pain and T is for a change in toilet habits. (https://www.ovacome.org.uk) This podcast is supported by a grant from the Public Engagement Fund in the Centre for Medical Engineering at King’s College London. 

Clive was diagnosed with prostate cancer back in 2016. He didn’t present with classic symptoms but his PSA levels suggested a problem. We talk to Clive about his experience and how his prostate cancer was treated. We also discuss improvements in diagnosis and staging of prostate cancer – how do we detect if the cancer has returned? What improvements have been made in treating prostate cancer if it returns or has spread to other areas of the body? We talk to one of our consultants, Prof. Cook about how developments in the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences have enabled his team to diagnose recurrent prostate cancer and about new radioactive drugs that can be used to treat this cancer. We also talk to one of our scientists, Dr Jennifer Young, about how a new radioactive drug was developed in our department to image prostate cancer.This podcast is funded by a grant from the Public Engagement Fund in the Centre for Medical Engineering at King’s College London.Follow us on Twitter @BigPicPod or on Facebook /biggerpicturepodcast

When Rachel found a lump in her breast she thought it probably wasn't serious, the doctor wasn't too concerned either but sent her to get it checked out. Unfortunately it turned out to be breast cancer. In this episode Maggie talks to Rachel about her experience of being diagnosed and treated for breast cancer.  In particular, they talk about the sentinel lymph node biopsy and how that is key to identifying if the cancer has spread to other areas of the body.Maggie also talks with Dr Julia Blower about some exciting research going on in the School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences at King's College London in which scientists are trying to find a less invasive way of working out if cancer has spread to other areas of the body by combing two different types of imaging, MRI and PET.Follow us on Twitter @BigPicPod or Facebook www.facebook.com/biggerpicturepodcast or email Margaret.cooper@kcl.ac.ukThis podcast is funded by a grant from the Public Engagement team at the Centre for Medical Engineering at King's College London

As a scientist at the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences at King's College London, I'm used to looking at pictures; they're usually pictures of scans either as part of a research study or scans of patients with illnesses like cancer. But is there more to the scan than just the picture? What's the Bigger Picture behind the scan? In order to find out more, I talk with patients about their experience of cancer, of having scans and treatment for cancer, what's important to them? What could we do better? What do we need to do to improve our research?  I discuss some of the work that we are doing at King's College London with people who have experienced cancer. I also talk to scientists involved in this research to talk about the progress we are making towards helping people with cancer.  We look at the Bigger Picture behind scans and treatment for cancer, explaining things in easy to understand terms.This introductory episode sets the scene for the podcast and helps explain what it's all about.https://www.facebook.com/biggerpicturepodcast https://twitter.com/BigPicPod