Madhavi awarded Royal College of Surgeons Research Fellowship | Research News

Congratulations to Dr Madhavi Natarajan, a trainee urology surgeon at the Trust, who has been awarded a Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) Research Fellowship.

The award will fund Madhavi to work on her PhD aimed at improving outcomes for bladder cancer patients using new and innovative approaches.

Madhavi said: “One of the focuses of my project is about immunotherapy, which is a treatment not widely available for bladder cancer. The other aspect of the research is looking at whether we can alter the microbial status within the bladder so that we reduce bad bacteria and increase good bacteria.

“We want to find out if we can better control bladder cancer as we know that there’s a link between the microbes and the cancer forming.

“I’m over the moon to receive the Fellowship, it’s really good news. It means my salary is funded for a year and we receive some financial help towards the cost of the project. A lot of the experiments I’m working on take hours, if not days, so coordinating this with a normal, full-time clinical job has been challenging.”

The process of applying for a RCS Fellowship is a rigorous and competitive one and Madhavi was asked to present her PhD to a panel of seven judges who each quizzed her on different aspects of the project.

Her work has been carried out under the guidance of Matthew Perry, Clinical Director of Urology, Professor Hardev Pandha, Director of Surrey Cancer Research Institute and Consultant Oncologist at St Luke’s Cancer Centre and Dr Nicola Annels, a senior immunology researcher who has been working side by side with to formulate the experimental plan and research techniques.

Madhavi said: “Professor Pandha and Matthew Perry are both very excited about the project. They were keen for someone to do this work but also the fact that I’m an urology registrar makes a huge difference to how I can approach the work. Essentially, if you’re doing the research as a scientist, you don't have direct access to patients. My involvement means that I can work closely with the scientists and directly liaise with patients. This encourages patient engagement with research and also helps our hospital community and multidisciplinary team to learn about novel treatment approaches.

“I’m extremely pleased to have this opportunity. Through my training, bladder cancer is a disease we deal with as every day but research has been more centred around other urological cancers.  That is one of my motivations for making bladder cancer the focus of my PhD project."