Meet First-ever Female Professor of Urology in the UK

“It was nice to have recognition for the work that I’d done. I guess it's been quite a lot of work over quite a number of years in collaboration with lots of others in the UK and internationally,” she says.

“Hopefully there will be some more female professors of urology in the future. I have a lot of women colleagues in radiology and oncology, but there are not so many women urologists in prostate cancer. A big body of my work is in patient-reported outcomes and there tend to be quite a lot of women in that community as well.”

Caroline’s research has spanned the whole patient experience, from diagnosis to treatment to life afterwards. She began by doing a research degree, studying a new technique, called photodynamic therapy, for prostate cancer. This aims to target the cancer precisely without damaging the surrounding healthy prostate.

“I really missed it when I left, and so I worked out ways to combine my clinical and academic training so that I could continue in prostate cancer research,” she says.

Last year, research that Caroline led was named the UK Research Paper of the Year by the British Medical Journal. This study, PRECISION, showed that an MRI scan before a biopsy improved the accuracy of diagnosis.

“The European guidelines have changed in response to PRECISION and the Americans have recently endorsed this approach as well. It’s great to know that it’s actually making a difference to men around the world,” she says.

Caroline has also been making a difference to how we consider success in surgery for prostate cancer. Traditional measures, such as blood transfusions required, may be easy to record but don’t have a long-term impact on the men. “What really does affect men after prostate cancer treatment is the impact on urinary function, particularly urine leakage and the impact on sexual function,” she says.

“The best way to find out how those are affecting men in their day-to-day lives is to ask the men themselves in a structured way and at time points after treatment. We can use those results to inform how we might choose the people who will benefit most from surgery and to refine surgical methods to make sure that people have as good a functional outcome as they can.”

As a member of the TUF Science and Education Committee, Caroline will help to steer the range of work that we can fund, thanks to your support.

“I’m very keen to help shape the research space and to create research that changes what happens to patients,” she says.

“Sometimes the patient's voice can get lost in the middle of research. Researchers and clinicians can sometimes chase questions that are not so relevant for patients. So to try and change that story, and get the patient’s voice heard, is very important to me.”

You can see some of the researchers we have funded over on our Meet Our TUF Scholars section