Anna Wilkins: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.
Andrea Miyahira: So first, tell us what your roles are and how you got to be where you are today.
Anna Wilkins: So I'd start by saying that I wouldn't have imagined I am where I am now, even five or 10 years ago. My career's sort of evolved as it's gone. My current post is I'm a clinician scientist, so four days a week I run a lab and then one day a week I'm an honorary consultant at the Royal Marsden. So I treat prostate and bladder cancer with drugs and radiation at the Royal Marsden. And I love doing that day. It wouldn't be without it. And my lab is growing in size and diversity. So we do a mixture of human translational science and preclinical work, including mouse modeling. And the overall question we're trying to address is how do we target the tumor microenvironment in bladder and prostate cancer to improve cure rates, particularly with radiation, but I'm interested in other treatments outside radiation too.
Andrea Miyahira: So that's wonderful. Tell us about your research and what you've been studying.
Anna Wilkins: So my research has sort of gone on a journey, to be honest. I started as a specialist trainee, I had some great opportunities at the Royal Marsden. So I did some small projects in prostate cancer that then evolved to me getting a PhD fellowship working on the CHHiP trial in radiotherapy fractionation. So that gave me fascinating insights to sort of clinical trial research and how much extra sort of biological research you could get out of clinical trials. I then sort of fell almost by accident really into becoming fascinated by these cells called cancer-associated fibroblasts that are known as CAFs, which I just kept observing in patient cohorts was driving bad outcomes. So I then took a deep dive into preclinical research where I worked at an institute called the Francis Crick Institute in London. And that gave me a sort of superb training in mouse models and sort of experiments in plastic, so to speak. And I was fortunate that I worked in a lab headed by a guy called Dr. Erik Sahai, who is a sort of international lead in these cancer-associated fibroblasts. So that sort of fueled my passion in that cell type. So now running my own group, I sort of marry up the clinical trial biological science and the preclinical modeling.
Andrea Miyahira: Well, that's really wonderful. And I would love to hear about some of your proudest achievements and also about a very special award that you recently received.
Anna Wilkins: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's been an exciting week this week. So I'll start with perhaps my proudest achievement. And that was actually one output from my PhD where I analyzed the quality of life data from the CHHiP radiotherapy fractionation study. And I sort of did that working with clinical trial colleagues, but I was able to lead that analysis. And we really clearly showed with very high statistical power and with a lot of detailed analysis that this shorter, kinder, four-week radiotherapy schedule was very well tolerated by patients. And we published that in Lancet Oncology, and it was a key part. I think one of the reasons why I'm really proud of it is I really believe in that data. It was such detailed reporting of patient experience for years afterwards, but it really contributed to the national and then international approval of this shorter, kinder radiotherapy fractionation schedule that's used very widely now.
Andrea Miyahira: That's wonderful. And also I'd love to hear about that latest award.
Anna Wilkins: Yes. So I was incredibly lucky that I was part of a team who went early this week on Tuesday to St. James' Palace to receive as a team the Queen Elizabeth Anniversary Award for our radiotherapy research. So it was the most fascinating day. I had a conversation with King Charles for more than five minutes and he was delightful and very warm and very interested in radiotherapy. And I also met Princess Anne and the Queen, and it was the most sort of, the palace is stunning. So it was a really fascinating day. And I suppose all research is a massive team approach. And I suppose the Institute of Cancer Research got this award for really two or three decades of research. And I suppose I've come along as perhaps somebody who's a bit of a new kid on the block, so was particularly lucky to be there.
Andrea Miyahira: So congratulations on that award to you and your team, and also congratulations to all of your accomplishments.
Anna Wilkins: Oh, that's very kind. Thank you.
Andrea Miyahira: So you've done so much. I would love to hear your approach to work-life balance and anything unique that you see about that in the UK.
Anna Wilkins: So that's a fascinating question. And I think trying to have a healthy approach to work-life balance is extremely important, not just for me and my family and my colleagues, but also because of junior colleagues who are often looking at seniors for what our lives are like. And I have taken quite a slow route through in many ways. I took two periods of maternity leave for both my children that was longer than six months each, which is different to the US. I think in the UK, our maternity leave is often between six to 12 months. Also, for all their preschool years, so before the age of four or five, I worked less than full-time. And I suppose if I'm honest, one of the challenges actually was finding research opportunities to kind of develop as a clinician scientist whilst doing that. And it was sort of finding opportunities where my senior colleagues wouldn't sort of disapprove of my less than full-time work or the maternity leave.
And that did come with some challenges, if I'm honest, there was some awkward conversations. But looking back, I think I would say to my junior self, you must prioritize your personal life and you must be the kind of parent that you want to be, and the rest will fit round. There are opportunities, and I think you can have, if you're sufficiently broad-minded, excellent kind of research and clinical opportunities whilst have the kind of work balance that you want to have. And obviously what any one person wants to do varies hugely, but I look back now and my children are now 11 and 13, and I love the fact that I had that time with them when they were young, and I did the less than full-time work, and I wouldn't change that for the world.
Andrea Miyahira: Well, that's wonderful. And do you have any other tips for women that are earlier in their career?
Anna Wilkins: I am repeatedly saddened by seeing junior female colleagues who do not realize how great they are. And I work with some wonderful junior female colleagues, and I really try and make them realize how great they are. Because one of the things that makes me sad is they sometimes, by not realizing how great they are, they will not go for the big opportunities. They will not apply for the most exciting jobs. They sometimes will not insist that they're first author on a project where they've done the lion's share of the work. And I think there is an element of you do need to fake it until you make it, and you do need to go for those big opportunities. And I do find myself trying to encourage junior colleagues to do that. And I suppose I have benefited from some really encouraging senior role models, and those role models, and I would highlight Emma Hall and David Dearnaley, have been utterly transformative for me. So I hope I can do some of that going forward.
Andrea Miyahira: That's just wonderful advice. And as you look forward in your career and your research, what are some of the things that you're most excited about?
Anna Wilkins: Actually, on Monday, I've got the first data scientist joining my group, which is a really exciting new step because it just means that the kind of analytical approaches we're able to do in my lab will be that bit more powerful. And so bringing in more spatial transcriptomics and highly multiplex immunofluorescence analysis, it just means, I mean, my lab does a lot of staring at beautiful multicolored pictures. I think we'll be able to be quantitatively much more intelligent with how we use the images of the tumor microenvironment that we've got. So I'm excited about that. And what I really want to be able to do with all of that is, in the next few years, have an early-phase clinical trial with novel targets, particularly in bladder cancer.
Andrea Miyahira: Well, that's very exciting. So congratulations. And thank you again for taking the time with me today.
Anna Wilkins: It's a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.