Question: Hi Thomas, So far, in your career, have you had any success in helping to find vital cures for diseases and illnesses such as: cancer, meningitis, etc.? Ben.

Thomas Biggans answered on 17 Jun 2016:

Hi Ben!

I personally haven’t found a cure for a disease yet. Finding cures requires a whole team of scientists working together so hopefully one day I’ll be part of a team that helps to find a cure.

My work is mainly about finding disease and keeping an eye on it during treatments. So I’ve personally worked on a project designed to find small plaques that form inside your blood vessels and test them to see if they are likely to break off and block the blood from going where it needs to go. This test helps the doctor decide what to do next.

Not all treatments work for everyone so that’s why there’s alot of interest in keeping an eye on disease during the course of treatment. If we see the treatment working then we know we can keep going and not have to try another way but if it’s making no difference then we stop the treatment and try something else. This saves time so we have longer to find a treatment that works and it stops the patient having to suffer side effects for no benefit. So nuclear medicine can be used to test possible cures to see if they actual work or not.