From rural India to a cutting-edge cancer lab

Meeting a Prime Minister would be a significant moment for most of us, but when UCL researcher Dr Raju Veeriah met Indian Prime Minister Nahendra Modi at the Francis Crick Institute last week, everyone in his home village in India came out in celebration. Raju grew up in a farming family in Periyavadi, a small rural village in South India 50km from the nearest train station. Raju was the first of the family to go to university, after his father spent years toiling on the farm to save up enough money to cover the fees. Raju excelled as a cancer researcher and went on to do his PhD at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Inspired by his father's work ethic, he saved up his PhD stipend to pay for his brother's university education. Raju is now a successful researcher in Professor Charlie Swanton's team at the Crick and the UCL's Cancer Institute, where he developed a technique for detecting lung cancer relapse in the bloodstream a year before clinical signs appear. When the paper reporting this technique was published in 2017, Professor Swanton posted Raju's parents a copy of the paper and a personal note about Raju's important contribution.