Professor of Radionuclide Imaging and Therapy
Jane Sosabowski is a Professor of Radionuclide Imaging and Therapy at Barts Cancer Institute and Dr Jennifer Young is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant working between King’s College London and QMUL. Jane’s research focuses on the development of radioactive drugs for imaging and therapy of cancer, and translating these to the clinic. Jennifer has worked on the production of gallium-68 radiotracers for clinical research studies and NHS patients at Barts Health NHS trust.
Jane Sosabowski and Jennifer Young were working to develop radioactive drugs for cancer treatment and to enable new clinical trials to happen with those in the UK. However, without the raw materials (the radionuclides), the team and other universities across the UK have been unable to do the preclinical and translational work that would put them at the cutting edge of research and development. Despite the enormous interest and global investment in medical radionuclides, the UK does not have its own infrastructure for producing them for medical use (i.e. imaging and radiopharmaceutical therapy). The National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), which is sponsored by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) recognised that there was an opportunity to derive rare and valuable radionuclides through purifying its nuclear waste. This was seen as an exciting and creative way to generate societal benefit when nuclear waste is usually a controversial topic.
In 2020 the NNL contacted Jane to see she or anyone in the UK medical radionuclide community would be interested in using radionuclides produced from their nuclear waste for research. Jane and Professor Phil Blower from King’s College London put out a call to the UK molecular radiotherapy community (radiochemists, physicists, clinicians, radiobiologists) to attend a Roundtable discussion with NNL, also inviting representatives from UKRI, Innovate UK, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) as well as professional bodies. The Roundtable topic “Re-establishing the supply of therapy radionuclides in the UK” captured the sense of frustration felt in the UK molecular radiotherapy community of lagging behind the rest of the world, and was avidly attended.
Jane, Jennifer and Phil were keen to leverage this motivation and enthusiasm and in 2021, established Radionuclides for Health UK, an advocacy project that aims to highlight the need for the UK to establish a domestic supply of radionuclides for use in cancer research, treatment and diagnostics. With support from Queen Mary’s Impact Accelerator Award and the Cancer Research UK Radiation Research Network Fund Meeting Award, they set up a series of workshops and site visits for the radiopharmaceutical development community. The aim was to make the case for the government to invest in the three areas of infrastructure that are needed to produce radionuclides for imaging and therapy: high-energy cyclotrons; a research reactor; and a process for purifying the UK’s NNL nuclear waste to obtain radionuclides.
These workshops and site visits led to the development of a working relationship with the medical radionuclides teams at both NNL and DESNZ, and saw Jennifer joining the nuclear directorate at DESNZ as a senior policy advisor for a six-month secondment in 2022 focused on medical radionuclides. Subsequently, their engagement has included roles as external advisors speaking with the Chief Scientific Advisors (CSAs) at DESNZ and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), assisting with an NHS England radiopharmacy review, and sitting on several panels as university representatives.
Jane, Phil and Jennifer received funding administered through Queen Mary to support their policy engagement activities. This included an EPSRC Impact Accelerator Award and a Research England Policy Impact Award, which enabled them to have the required staff resources, for Jennifer to go on secondment to DESNZ and for communications support from Inflect Partners, a strategic communications consultancy.
The government’s departments are not as joined up as they could be so one of Jane and Jennifer’s biggest challenges was navigating how to engage with the Department for Health and Social Care as they would be the ultimate end users of the radiopharmaceuticals that they want to develop. The £6M Medical Radionuclides Innovation Programme has been directly funded by the Department for Energy and Net Zero, and not by UKRI. They would like to learn how to better influence and gain traction with UKRI, which is sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
The turbulence within the government over the past years with frequent changes in Prime Ministers, Ministerial resignations, and Cabinet reshuffles meant that it was difficult to progress initiatives, especially when they required Ministerial sign-off. To combat the flux within government, Jane and Jennifer stress the value of having your area of work written into the government’s spending review as it means that it has received ministerial backing and allocated funding and is more likely to remain a government commitment if the minister ends up changing. Spending reviews are a process by which the government sets out detailed plans for public spending for government departments, typically several years ahead. The flipside of this is that once a new spending review is announced, funds are fixed and there may be few opportunities to ask for more money for that area. The Medical Radionuclides Innovation Programme was proposed as part of the DESNZ R&D funding in the 2021 spending review, which set out budgets from 2022-2025. During Jennifer’s secondment within DESNZ, the business case for this programme of work was developed, before its launch in Dec 2022. MRIP will run until March 2025 and the spending review which will determine budget allocation past this point is expected in 2024 after the general election.
With a change of government possible at the general election, there will be a question around how a new government will perceive the direction of policies that were developed by the previous government. This potential change will also necessitate academics like Jane and Jennifer to make themselves known amongst a new cohort of MPs and Ministers. They are already strategising ways to align themselves with people like Wes Streeting (Shadow Health Secretary at the time of writing) by positioning radionuclides as a potential high-value industry for the UK that will stimulate growth and investment.
Compared to large industry companies, academics like Jane and Jennifer are ‘time stretched and cash poor’ and have significantly fewer resources to put towards influencing policymakers. Funding schemes and systems within academia, which often come in the form of small grants or short-term pots, make it difficult to hire people on a sustainable basis for this valuable work.
This case study was supported by Audrey Tan (Policy Partnerships Manager, Mile End Institute) and Maja Wawrzynowicz (Policy Associate, Mile End Institute). If you’re interested in learning more about how you can build policy engagement into your own work, check out the Queen Mary Policy Hub’s Learning Resources and Policy Engagement How-To Guides.