Simply Oncology

Send us Fan Mail Join us as we discuss all things prostate radiotherapy with Dr Alison Tree.  Alison is synonymous with all things prostate radiotherapy and is superb at setting the scene for prostate cancer. Based at The Royal Marsden Hospital, and The Institute of Cancer Research, Dr Tree has played a key role in several major prostate radiotherapy trials. These include working alongside Profess...

Send us Fan Mail Join us for part 2 of our excellent review of high grade brain tumours with Professor Anthony Chalmers. We look at the role of PARPi and the challenges with new therapies in high grade gliomas. We discuss tumour treatment fields, vaccine trials and immunotherapy in brain tumours. We also hear Prof Chalmers wish list for helping advance research in brain tumours. We hope you enjoy!

Send us Fan Mail Join us today as we discuss high grade brain tumours with internationally recognised expert Professor Anthony Chalmers. Part 1 of 2 and we discuss implications of new molecular profiling on prognosis and treatment options in high grade brain tumours. We look at some recent changes in radiotherapy volumes and doses in brain tumours. We also discuss challenges in treatment of high g...

Send us Fan Mail This week the Simply Oncology podcast goes global! Over 80 % of the world population is living in low or middle income countries. In this podcast, we're hopefully going to try and cover what is global oncology , what some of the challenges that low middle income countries are facing in terms of delivering cancer care. We also touch on how clinicians in the UK might be able to...

Send us Fan Mail Join us for our second discussion with Professor Alison Birtle on metastatic prostate cancer. This time we look at mCRPC. What are our choices after first line therapy. We discuss; -PARPi and BRCA testing -Docetaxel re-challenge -Cabazitaxel -Patient Support This is a real tour de force by Alison. We hope you enjoy. John & Mike

Send us Fan Mail Join us as we discuss the frontline therapy of metastatic hormone sensitive  prostate cancer with Professor Alison Birtle . Alison has been involved in many of the key trials in urological cancers and shares her take on selecting patients for triplet therapy. We also look at the factors that affect treatment choices for our mHSPC pateints. This area has changed so much in recent y...

Send us Fan Mail Join us in this episode where we look at the treatment landscape in ovarian cancer . We talk to Dr Shibani Nicum and Dr Rebecca Bowen who both specialise in the treatment of ovarian cancer. They both lead the UK Gynae Trials Group (GTG) group and are involved in running the excellent UK Gynae-oncology Meeting (UKGOM). We look at the use of PARPi, Bevacizumab (Avastin) and new targ...

Send us Fan Mail Join us as we talk with Benson Fayehun , a passionate advocate for addressing health inequalities. Benson is the Founder and President of the Relief for Human Suffering Foundation , a U.S.-based public charity, and the UK Head of Oncology Business Unit at MSD*. In this episode, we delve into how factors like poverty, socio-economic status, language, and more often have a greater i...

Send us Fan Mail After a great overview of cervical cancer highlights we now go back to gynae cancer specialist Dr Gemma Emminowicz for insight on endometrial cancer highlights. KEYNOTE B21- looking at adding pembrolizuamb in the adjuvant setting DUO-E - looking at durvalumab and olaparib in the metastatic setting The horizon for antibody drug conjugates in endometrial cancer. We hope you enjoy Jo...

Send us Fan Mail We talk again to Gynae-oncology specialist  - the excellent -Dr Gemma Eminowicz from UCL hospital. Gemma also played a key role supporting Dr Mary McCormack in delivering the INTERLACE trial. We talk about updates from ESMO and IGCS on cervical cancer. Gemma discusses her Quality of Life data she presented from INTERLACE and of course we discuss the exciting KEYNOTE A18 data. We h...

Send us Fan Mail This episode is hoping to show patients and the public that non-smoking lung cancer is a very real and very different type of lung cancer to smoking lung cancer. We discuss the great work that charities like Ruth Strauss foundation, Ros Wonders and EGFR UK do to support this patient group. Pollution may play a part, vaping may play a part. Dr Tom Newsom-Davis Chair-elect of the Br...

Send us Fan Mail Radiotherapy is one of the silent workhorses of cancer treatment yet has very little coverage in the media. In this episode we talk to Amy Warnock one of our treatment radiographers about what to expect during radiotherapy and she talks through what will happen on the day to day basis of radiotherapy. We hope you enjoy. John & Mike

Send us Fan Mail Chemotherapy is scary and we want to make it less scary for patients. Simple. We talk to senior chemotherapy nurse Rachel Bryce from University Hospital Plymouth - she is also Macmillan lead systemic anti-cancer therapy (SACT) lead and UKONS SACT representative -  about what patients can expect and what to look out for expect on chemotherapy. We think this is great discussion that...

Send us Fan Mail In recent years we have seen a marked change in the landscape of treatment for endometrial cancer. This has been driven by understanding the different molecular subtypes of endometrial cancer. POLE - with an excellent prognosis MMR deficient - with good prognosis and option for immunotherapy No Specific molecular profile - intermediate outcome and work still to be done P53 mutant...

Send us Fan Mail Approximately 1 in 10 metastatic prostate cancer patients develop osteoporotic fractures. Whilst treatment for prostate cancer has meant patient are living longer we have to make sure they are also living better. Testosterone removal, Androgen receptor targeted agents and steroids can all reduce bone strength. We talk to Dr Xue-Yan Jiang who is part of a group preparing guidelines...

Send us Fan Mail Approximately 15% of all lung cancer happen in non-smokers!! We talk to Dr Tom Newsom-Davis a medical oncologist who specialises in lung cancer about this very specific group of lung cancers. Tom is chair-elect of the British Thoracic Oncology Group and shares his experience of treating non-smoking related lung cancers and their driver mutations - EGFR, ROS-1 and ALK. This is a fa...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we discuss CDK4/6 inhibitors with Professor Mark Beresford, Clinical oncologist and chair of UK Breast cancer Group. Mark shares his knowledge on why we are giving these drugs to patients with breast cancer and what patients can expect on them. This is a really big group of patients and we hope this is useful for supporting them. We hope you enjoy John & Mike

Send us Fan Mail To day we focus on the big 3 side effects of hormone manipulation in prostate cancer: -Hot Flushes -The 5 Ps of Fatigue -Sexual Function We talk to British Association or  Urological Nursing trustee and nurse specialist Debbie Victor on strategies to manage these side effects. This is aimed at helping patients help themselves so feel free to share with anyone you know having hormo...

Send us Fan Mail Hormone therapy is a key part of prostate cancer treatment. Removing access to testosterone starves prostate cancer and can cause a 'manopause' or male menopause symptoms. We discuss this with clinical nurse and BAUN trustee- Debbie Victor. We look at the impact of this on prostate cancer patients and what positive steps patients can take to tackle these side effects the...

Send us Fan Mail Dr Nicolo Battisti is the president of the Society of international geriatric oncology and a medical oncologist at the Royal Marsden Hospital. He shares his thoughts and wisdom on how we can help our older patients and their carers recognise signs of frailty and how to tackle them.

Send us Fan Mail Part 2 of our Cancer in the elderly and assessing Frailty. We talk to Dr Nicolò Battisti about what measures we can take to set up frailty assessment. Great tips and advice. Enjoy

Send us Fan Mail Not every older patient is frail and not every frail patient is old. The incidence of cancer goes up rapidly in the older age groups with a big jump in incidence in the over 75 age group. We are treating increasing numbers of older patients with increasingly complex therapy. This is often called a 'Silver Tsunami'. We talk to Dr Nicolo Battisti  - A medical oncologist -...

Send us Fan Mail Part 2 of 2 of our managing stress when delivering cancer care theme. Here we talk again to the excellent Dr Mike Osborn. We discuss what we can do to help actively recognise and manage some of the impact of stress and emotional fatigue. ‘What advice would a friend give you about how you are managing stress?’. We need to take care of ourselves as we take care of others. Enjoy!!! J...

Send us Fan Mail “Just because you make it look easy doesn't mean it is easy for you.” Stress, burnout, resilience and emotional fatigue. These are phrases that have become part of NHS life. In this episode we discuss the impact of this with psychologist Dr Mike Osborn for Royal United Bath Hopsital. We talk about telltale signs and the impact this can have on ourselves and patients.

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we speak to Dr Karin Purshouse, current Chair of the National Oncology Trainee Collaborative for Healthcare Research.  We hear about the origins of the organisation and how it has expanded since 2019, with registrar representation in all regions in the UK. NOTCH excels in running national multicentre retrospective cohort studies, generating real world evidence with...