Consultant Paediatric Oncologist at Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham
Q: Tell us about your career so far?
A: I was born and raised in Chennai in South India, qualifying as a doctor from the Christian Medical College in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, before coming to the UK in 2002. I trained in hospitals in England, Wales and Scotland, and became a consultant in 2016. I also obtained a PhD in cancer metabolism from the University of Dundee in 2013 and have since done research alongside clinical work, spending half my time studying rare cancers.
Q: Tell us about your role?
A: As an oncologist, I lead and facilitate the care of children and young people with cancer from diagnosis and treatment to follow-up as well as long-term survivorship. I specialise in treating children with solid tumours and brain tumours.
Q: Did you always want to be involved in childhood cancer care?
A: I always wanted to be a paediatrician and as I went through training, I decided to train in a research-driven speciality. I spent six months on the oncology ward and realised that the team looking after children with cancer have a multidisciplinary approach, guided by research, and deliver compassionate, holistic care centred around the young person. I haven’t looked back since.
Q: What’s the most rewarding thing about your job?
A: It’s a privilege to be able to help and support the children and young people I look after and I really enjoy getting to know and find out more about them, whether that’s their interests in sport, music or film, the games they like to play, or what their pets are called.
Q: What are the biggest challenges?
A: The biggest challenge in my opinion is striking a balance between cure and long-term side effects from treatments. We need more effective treatments for hard-to-treat cancers. At the same time, we also need kinder treatments so that children and young people live well, once cured.
Q: Why are rare and hard-totreat cancers so important to you?
A: Some cancers are as rare as one in a million. It takes international collaboration to research and carry out clinical trials in rare disease. I believe that every child deserves the best available treatment driven by research and we mustn’t use rarity as an excuse to not develop treatments for these children. And, understanding rare cancers could lead to new treatments that could be used in other cancers or diseases.
Q: What are your research interests, and what area of your work excites you most?
A: My research interest is in cancer metabolism, which is to understand what nutrients are specifically needed to help cancers grow and to develop treatments that selectively block these and therefore only kill the cancer cells. I’m particularly interested in liver and brain tumours as they’re the two types of cells that are metabolically most active.
Q: What’s the proudest moment of your career so far?
A: Establishing my own research group focused on cancer metabolism four years ago. Over the last few years, we’ve identified novel alterations in nutrient uptake by cancer cells, and we’re in the process of testing the effects of interfering with these processes in the lab. If successful, some of these panels could be used to monitor response to treatment. We could also potentially develop new treatments in the future.
Q: Do you have a message for children and their families affected by childhood cancer?
A: Every child is unique and clinicians and researchers are continuously developing tailored treatments that can be personalised to improve outcomes. This work wouldn’t be possible without the generosity and altruism that children and families show in donating tissue for research and participating in clinical trials.
From Contact magazine issue 98 - Spring 2023
