John Burn-Murdoch

These advances are having a huge knock-on effect on our lives, and I really want to find out more.

Joining me today is Professor Sir John Bell, Emeritus Regis Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford.

He's advised the UK government on life sciences, pharmaceutical strategy and COVID testing and played a pivotal role in the development of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine during the pandemic.

He's currently a partner at Population Health Partners, a firm focused on investing in and advising life science companies, and he previously served on the board of pharmaceutical company Roche.

Together, we're going to explore the technological and organisational breakthroughs driving this extraordinary progress, and what these changes mean, not just for healthcare, but for the future of society itself.

But before we begin, a quick reminder, if you subscribe to Radical on BBC Sounds, you won't miss future episodes, including Your Radical Questions, our listener Q&A released every Monday.

Now, on to this week's episode with Professor Sir John Bell.

Professor Sir John Bell, welcome to Radical.

It's a real honor to have you with us.

My pleasure.

If some of our listeners today have no idea about what has been happening in medical science and technology over the last decade, what have they missed?

Sorry, can we talk a little bit more about that?

So an example that struck me was with childhood leukemia, right?

So when I was growing up in the 80s and early 90s, this was really seen as a death sentence.

If you heard that someone had leukemia, you thought, well, what a tragedy.

Now, the survival rates have dramatically improved just over the last couple of decades, right?

Can you talk us through what's happening behind the scenes there?

Right.

So an example that I came across recently was the prospect of a vaccine for pancreatic cancer.

Now, one of the reasons that seems to be so significant is that pancreatic cancer has been so deadly.