Dr Ananth Shankar

Dr Ananth Shankar is an expert on cancers that affect children and young people. At University College Hospital in London, Dr Shankar is focussing his expertise on a type of Hodgkin lymphoma called nodular lymphocyte predominant type, which make up around 10% of Hodgkin lymphoma cases.

Patients diagnosed with this disease at an early stage are often given both surgery and chemotherapy, which can be a very successful treatment. But chemotherapy can cause side effects that can last for a long time, so Dr Shankar is working to make this treatment kinder while maintaining its effectiveness.

To do this, Dr Shankar is running a clinical trial that’s looking at whether children or young people with this type of Hodgkin lymphoma can be treated with surgery alone, or with surgery and a less intensive chemotherapy course than is currently used.  If either of these are found to be just as effective at treating patients as the current standard treatment, this trial could change the way that patients are treated for the better, reducing long-term side effects from treatment.