Medical & Health Sciences
Professor Pauline Schaap – From So Simple a Beginning – The Origins of Multicellularity
Professor Pauline Schaap at the University of Dundee combines elegant yet powerful evolutionary reconstruction approaches with genetic and biochemical methods to unpick the evolution of multicellularity in the social amoebas. Her ground-breaking work has provided a...
Cylerus: An Innovative Approach to Vascular Drug Delivery
Prosthetic vascular grafts for dialysis access have a limited lifespan and usefulness due to inflammation, infection and especially blood vessel narrowing at the site of graft implantation. Consequently, patients need repeated surgeries to revise or replace the...
Dr Lalit Pukhrambam – Targeting Thioredoxin-Interacting Protein: The Future for Treating Diabetic Retinopathy?
Diabetic retinopathy is one of the main causes of blindness in developed countries. Currently, there is no known cure. Dr Lalit Pukhrambam is working to change that. Along with his group at Wayne State University, he is investigating the influence that a molecule,...
Professor Ulrich E. Schaible | Dr Tobias Dallenga – A New Approach to Tuberculosis Treatment
With the growing challenge of antibiotic resistance, developing alternative treatments for tuberculosis is vital. Elegant research led by Professor Ulrich E. Schaible and Dr Tobias Dallenga at the Research Center Borstel in Germany suggests that innate host immune...
COBRE – Raising the Bar in Stroke Recovery and Rehabilitation
Despite the high number of stroke survivors worldwide, research to help those with chronic disabilities after stroke has long been underemphasised. The Medical University of South Carolina’s Center for Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) in Stroke Recovery aims to...
Dr Anju Vasudevan – Linking Blood Vessel Development to Psychiatric Disorders
The research of Dr Anju Vasudevan, from the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital, focusses on the early development of blood vessels in the brain and how defects in this process may be associated with a diagnosis of neuropsychiatric...
Dr Stephen Lane – Playing Voice Messages to Improve Hygiene and Health
Hand hygiene is the most cost-effective approach to preventing the transmission of infectious diseases in hospitals. While there has been much effort towards improving hand hygiene by healthcare workers, patients are seldom targeted. To this end, Dr Stephen Lane,...
Professor Ulrich Flögel | Dr Sebastian Temme – Shedding Light on Biomedical Hot Spots with Cutting Edge Imaging
Professor Ulrich Flögel and Dr Sebastian Temme at the University of Düsseldorf are pushing the boundaries of a sophisticated imaging technique. This non-invasive tool can accurately visualise damaged tissue and different cell types in real time. The technology they...
Dr William Lovallo | Dr Ashley Acheson – The Interaction Between Genetics and Environment in Alcohol and Substance Use Disorders
The longstanding collaboration between Dr William Lovallo, of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Centre, and Dr Ashley Acheson of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, is shedding important light on how individuals differentially react to stress and...
Professor Barry M. Popkin – Tackling the Obesity Epidemic
Obesity is a growing problem around the world, with many negative consequences for both individuals and societies. Research by Professor Barry M. Popkin and his team at the University of North Carolina aims to help lead us beyond the current obesity epidemic. A...
Dr Jason Crawford – Could a Better Understanding of Bacteria Prevent Colorectal Cancer?
Our digestive system contains trillions of bacterial cells, constituting a highly diverse community of microorganisms living within us that can influence human physiology and cause disease. Dr Jason Crawford at Yale University has extensively researched some of the...
Professor Notger Müller – Denying Dementia with Earlier Diagnosis
The development of dementia in older age has a potentially devasting impact on quality of life. Tackling dementia earlier rather than later is vital because of its nature as a progressive disease. Professor Notger Müller and his team at the German Center for...
Dr Tilmann Betsch – What Children Can and Cannot Do in Decision Making
Human beings are asked to make a wide variety of choices throughout the course of their life, in both childhood and adulthood. Dr Tilmann Betsch, Professor of Social, Organisational and Economic Psychology at the University of Erfurt in Germany, has carried out...
Dr Cornelius Engelmann | Professor Thomas Berg – The Hormone Making Liver Failure Treatment Successful
Liver cirrhosis causes many harmful symptoms that develop as time goes on. These symptoms can culminate in a severe condition, with currently few treatment options, known as acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF). Dr Cornelius Engelmann and Professor Thomas Berg at the...
Dr Anthony Berdis – Combatting Cancer – Breakthrough Research Against the Dreaded Disease
In essence, cancer cannot be ‘cured’, but it can be vigorously treated. However, many of the treatments currently used to combat cancer often cause harmful side-effects, that are sometimes even more dangerous than the disease itself. Dr Anthony Berdis and his team at...
Professor David Furness – Understanding Hearing at the Cellular Level
How do we hear and process sound? Professor David Furness at Keele University, UK, is endeavouring to answer this question. By utilising modern microscopical techniques, his team is visualising and identifying the proteins that enable us to convert sound into...
Professor Phillip Hylemon | Professor Huiping Zhou – Bile Acids Are Not Just for Digestion
Over the last two decades, bile acids have gone from being thought of as mere helpers during digestion of fats and fat-soluble vitamins, to crucial players in the signalling pathways operating in the liver. Professor Phillip Hylemon and Professor Huiping Zhou, from...
Professor Andrea Duina – The Many Complexities of DNA Packing and Gene Expression
Although fundamental to life itself, many processes involving DNA and its packing inside cells still remain to be elucidated. Here, we follow the work of Professor Andrea Duina and his team at Hendrix College, Arkansas, USA, in their efforts to understand the...
Dr Claudio Fiocchi – An Integrated Approach to Fighting Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) causes significant pain and discomfort to sufferers and severely affects quality of life. Research on IBD focusing on the individual contributing factors has failed to provide truly effective treatment options, and the broader picture...
Professor Charles Bangham – The Forgotten Cousin of HIV
The catastrophic impact of HIV – human immunodeficiency virus – is well-known worldwide. Not so well known is its distant cousin HTLV-1, human T cell leukaemia virus type 1, which also has the potential to destroy lives. The study of HTLV-1 can shed light on HIV...
Dr Stephen Hecht – Biological Mechanisms Link Smoking, Lung Cancer and Ethnicity
Cigarette smoking is a leading cause of cancer globally. Dr Stephen Hecht and co-workers at the University of Minnesota are investigating the substances present in cigarette smoke and in the urine and saliva of cigarette smokers that contribute to lung cancer. In a...
Dr Darren Higgins – Understanding the Pathogenic Mechanisms of Intracellular Bacteria
Dr Darren Higgins and his team at Harvard Medical School use a multidisciplinary approach to investigate the mechanisms involved in the growth and spread of disease-causing bacteria that invade human cells. The team is developing new therapies to combat these...
Professor Gerhard Rammes | Professor Rainer Rupprecht – The Translocator Protein: From Imaging Facility to Pharmacy
The diagnosis of brain conditions relies heavily on non-invasive imaging techniques to identify the affected areas. A protein known as the ‘translocator protein’ is increased in areas of brain inflammation and can be used as an imaging marker to diagnose various...
Dr Joseph Vetro – Complexed Drugs for Complex Diseases
RNA interference is a genetic mechanism for altering the expression of genes that is being developed to fight cancer. By increasing the activity of RNA interference molecules in solid tumours after administration into the blood stream, Dr Joseph Vetro and his group at...
NIGMS – Leading the Way in STEM Education & Training
Established in 1962, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) is one of the 27 Centers, Institutes and Offices within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – the primary medical research agency of the US Government. In addition to supporting basic...
Professor Angela Friederici – The Neurobiology of the Human Language System
For centuries, scientists have been investigating the origins and development of the human language system, yet many questions remain unanswered. Professor Angela Friederici, Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, in...
Professor Roland Bender – Sex on the Brain – the Neurobiology of Sex Hormones
The prevalence of anxiety and mood disorders is on the rise worldwide. Men and women experience different types of anxiety disorders at different rates – this may be partially due to sex specific differences in the brain. To understand this difference Professor...
Professor Regina Fluhrer – A Unique Family of Intramembrane Proteases
Intramembrane proteases are proteins located in the core of the cell membranes of mammals and other organisms. Discovered at the end of last century, they are still poorly understood and implicated in a number of diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease, malaria and...
Dr Mark D. Hayward | Dr Jennifer Karas Montez – Education and Health Disparity Across the US
Adults living in certain US states suffer from more illnesses, more disability, and die sooner than residents of others. Dr Mark D. Hayward of the University of Texas at Austin and Dr Jennifer Karas Montez of Syracuse University are investigating these differences in...
Professor Sylvain Baillet – Brain Training
Gaining insight into the brain and its inner workings improves our understanding of behaviour and our knowledge of the diseases and treatments of our most complex organ. Professor Sylvain Baillet and his research team at the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre of the...
Chantau Lau – From Surviving to Thriving: Boosting the Oral Feeding Performance of Premature Babies
Dr Rens van de Schoot – Statistical Methods for Small Data
Researchers are heavily reliant on statistical techniques that are based on large sample sizes. Therefore, attempts to gain useful information from small samples can often lead to biased, or incorrect conclusions. Dr Rens van de Schoot at Utrecht University has shown...