Chennai doctor to deliver prestigious lecture in UK

CHENNAI: When he graduated from Kilpauk Medical College in 1994, little did Dr Srinivasan Madhusudan know that just 17 years down the line he would be chosen by the Royal College of Physicians, London to deliver its prestigious Goulstonian lecture.
Dr Madhusudan, who is the first Indian to be given the honor of delivering the 372-year-old lecture, hails from Coimbatore but was brought up in Chennai where he spent twenty years of his life and attended the Sindhi Model Senior Secondary School.At the lecture, which is likely to be held at the end of this year or early next year, Dr Madhusudan will talk about personalised cancer therapy and the research which is underway in order to increase the cancer cell-kill and improve treatment outcomes in patients.
"My interest in cancer developed at a very young age," he says. "There were personal reasons that motivated me to take up this speciality and make a difference. I grew up seeing my father going through this illness and realised that cancer is not just a physical illness but also has psychosocial implications on the family and society," says Dr Madhusudan, who is also a keen student of Hindu philosophy and Vedanta.
During his undergraduate years at KMC, his interest in the subject deepened and after moving to the UK, he decided to undertake specialist training in cancer in Oxford. "My mentors in Oxford were inspirational figures working in key cancer-related areas. I developed an interest in DNA repair and completed my PhD at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford. I have been working in DNA repair and personalised cancer therapy for over five years," he says.
Explaining the concept of DNA repair he says that by stopping the property of cancer cells to repair themselves after chemotherapy, an increase in cancer cell-kill could be achieved. Talking about personalised cancer therapy, the latest in the field of cancer, Dr Madhusudan says it is now possible to design treatments for indivdual patients. "By this approach we will not only be able to predict who will respond to specific treatment but most importantly we will be able to avoid treatments that are unlikely to work on certain patients," he says. He adds that personalised therapy in stomach and oesophageal cancer was the area of focus now. His lecture will deal with these aspects.