Posts Tagged ‘translational medicine’

helen maddock

June 21st, 2010

There are many perspectives on the relationship between blue skies research and its application, perhaps none more important than the potential of what’s known as ‘translational medicine’.

Dr Helen Maddock‘s work is in this important ‘translation’ — and crosses disciplinary boundaries. For example, she’s currently investigating drug-related cardiovascular complications with biomechanical, quantitative pharmacological and biomedical techniques, and collaborating with cardiologists and cardiothoracic surgeons to study how a heart attack results in injury or death of the heart muscle.

Dr Helen Maddock is Principal Lecturer in Cardiovascular Physiology and Pharmacology at Coventry University, and is Editor of the British Society for Cardiovascular Research Journal Bulletin. She’s worked for AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline as well as undertaking research at UCL’s Hatter Institute and Centre for Cardiology. Her current research includes investigating the role of reactive oxygen species, mitochondrial injury and apoptosis in myocardial stress, and also the development of novel therapies for the treatment of diseases related to the cardiovascular system.

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charles craddock

June 10th, 2010

Some kinds of leukemia and myeloma have been traditionally very difficult to treat, and put patients through punishing chemotherapy which only sometimes worked. This situation has recently changed dramatically.

Charles Craddock Director of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Unit at University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust says there are now exciting novel transplant and drug therapies, transforming patients’ lives, enabling many to live longer and fuller lives than was ever thought possible only a few years ago.

Charles Craddock is Professor of Haematolo-oncology at the University of Birmingham as well as Director of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Unit at University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. He has a particular research interest in the development of novel transplant and drug therapies in leukemia and myeloma. He also works with groups researching chromatin structure in acute-myeloid leukemia, mechanisms of drug resistance in myeloma and characterisaation of dysregulated signalling pathways in leukemia using proteomics.

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philip johnson

June 10th, 2010

“The UK is the best place in the world to run trials, with consequent ‘wealth and health’ benefits,” so says Philip Johnson, Director of the Cancer Research UK Clinical Trails Unit as well as Professor of Oncology and Translational Research at the University of Birmingham. In The New Optimists he argues why clinical trials are so important, and the kind of impact they have on treatments and patient care across the world.

Professor Johnson developed his interest in clinical trials and hepatobiliary cancer whilst at the Institute of Liver Studies, Kings College Hospital, London where he subsequently became Assistant Director. In 1992, he was appointed to the Chair of Clinical Oncology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong where he also became Director of the Cancer Centre and developed the Comprehensive Clinical Trials Unit whilst furthering his research interests into molecular biomarkers of cancer and new approaches to the treatment of live cancer.

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andrew peet

June 10th, 2010

The clinical treatment of brain tumours in children is undergoing a revolution because of new scanning techniques; i.e. ever more illuminating non-invasive brain imaging of several kinds. The medics caring for these children now have a far better understanding of what the tumour is and where it is — and so can provide far more effective treatments.

Dr Andrew Peet is at the forefront of research in this area, and is a clinician too, being both a Clinical Research Fellow and Honorary Consultant Paediatric Oncologist at the University of Birmingham and the Oncology Department at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.

His research is on new scanning techniques and, in his contribution to The New Optimists, he explains how CT scans provided the first breakthrough, and now how magnetic resonance spectroscopy and other complementary functional imaging techniques are revolutionising both our understanding and the treatment of brain tumours.

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