Newcastle University

 The annual British Science Festival is a chance for the host city to showcase their innovations and advances in all disciplines of science; and this year saw Newcastle deliver a supreme series of workshops, lectures and activities.

 Amongst these was the a series of talks, called Protons to Patients, organised by Christopher Reed, School of Chemistry. This introduced the public to the latest advancement in combating cancer and cancer imaging.

The session was opened by Prof. Herbie Newell, who gave an overview of cancer therapeutics. Prof. Newell was followed by Dr Stephanie Myers who gave an in-depth talk on how cancer drug discovery is developed in the medicinal chemistry labs in the School.

Dr Mike Carroll went on to describe how research on cancer imaging radiopharmaceuticals is now being conducted thanks to the installation of a state-of-the-art compact cyclotron, with its application in positron-emission tomography discussed by Dr Ross Maxwell.

Prof. Ruth Plummer from the Sir Bobby Robson Cancer Trials Research centre rounded off the session by explaining how this research at Newcastle directly contributed to treating patients living with cancer and how further developments in cancer imaging will greatly aid the fight against cancer. The session was well attended and the public attendees had plenty of interesting questions for the speakers during the Q & A session.