News in 2017
- Major funding boost for internationally-recognised healthcare research centres 11 December 2017 Three interdisciplinary research consortia, including the University of Bristol's SPHERE project, have been allocated more than £11 million to continue healthcare sensing systems research that is revolutionising how we identify and respond to outbreaks of infectious diseases, diagnose and manage lung diseases, and recognise and solve emerging health and wellbeing issues in the home environment.
- Research reveals how cells rebuild after division 4 December 2017 University of Bristol research has revealed how cells rebuild their nucleus and organise their genome when they divide – a discovery which could have major implications for understanding cancer and degeneration.
- Children With Cancer UK grant 30 November 2017 The aim of the project is to offer a better treatment to children with brain tumours in the future.
- Primary care is key to optimising value in healthcare 14 November 2017 Balancing improvements in health against the cost of such improvements in primary care is vital to achieve a cost-effective and efficient healthcare system, finds a new report by University of Bristol researchers and published in the BMJ.
- NCRI Conference 2017 10 November 2017 This year’s National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Conference took place 5 - 8 November 2017 in Liverpool. Amongst the poster presentations was "A randomized controlled feasibility trial of green tea and lycopene interventions in men at elevated risk of prostate cancer (ProDiet)"
- A new method for the 3D printing of living artificial tissues 1 November 2017 A team from the University of Bristol’s School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, together with scientists at the University of Oxford, has developed a new method to 3D-print stem cells to form complex living 3D structures.
- NIHR Fellowship 18 October 2017 Sabina Sanghera was recently awarded a NIHR Post-Doctoral Fellowship.
- Centre for Cancer Epidemiology workshop 17 October 2017 From the 4th to the 14th of October 2017 ten members of the IEU and ICEP embarked on a journey to teach on the Mendelian randomization and Epigenetic Cancer Epidemiology workshop at the Centre for Cancer Epidemiology at the TATA Memorial Centre Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education in Cancer (ACTREC) in Navi Mumbai, India.
- New discovery could reverse tissue damage 12 September 2017 A new discovery by University of Bristol scientists helps to explain how cells which surround blood vessels, called pericytes, stimulate new blood vessels to grow with the hormone ‘leptin’ playing a key role. Leptin is produced by fat cells which helps to regulate energy balance in the body by inhibiting the appetite. This study, described in Scientific Reports, may have important implications for the treatment of heart attacks and also for cancer, the two main killers in the UK.
- Big Bang Bristol 31 August 2017 Big Bang Bristol is a two day Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) fair aimed at school-aged children which this year took place 6 - 7 July 2017 at the Trinity Centre in Bristol.
- Bristol researcher wins prestigious diabetes research award 24 August 2017 A University of Bristol researcher whose own family has been affected by diabetes has just been awarded £587,237 from leading charity Diabetes UK to find out why people with Type 2 diabetes are more likely to develop some cancers.
- WUN Strategic Research Workshop 1 August 2017 The World Universities Network Global Africa Group launched its inaugural Strategic Research Workshop, hosted by the University of Ghana in a two-day event that brought together over sixty researchers from twelve WUN partner universities and ten other universities from four continents.
- Phase 3 clinical trial success 27 July 2017 A Phase 3 study evaluating Opdivo 3 mg/kg versus Yervoy 10 mg/kg in patients with stage IIIb/c or stage IV melanoma who are at high risk of recurrence following complete surgical resection met its primary endpoint at a planned interim analysis, demonstrating superior recurrence-free survival (RFS) in patients receiving Opdivo compared to Yervoy.
- Transforming UK Translation commitments 27 July 2017 The Academy of Medical Sciences, Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal Society, and the Wellcome Trust, have outlined a series of commitments to ensure that translation is recognised and celebrated as an integral part of academic research.
- Clinical Trial recruitment success 20 July 2017 The UHBristol Haematology and Oncology Centre Clinical Trials Unit are the first to recruit globally for A Study of CYP-001 for the Treatment of Steroid-Resistant Acute Graft Versus Host Disease.
- New Head of School for Cellular and Molecular Medicine 20 July 2017 Prof Anne Ridley FMedSci FRS has been confirmed as the new Head of School for Cellular and Molecular Medicine.
- Cancer Research UK news 17 July 2017 Strategy progress report, Early Detection Research Committee, and a new chief clinician announced.
- Cancer Research UK 2017 Research Engagement Award 6 July 2017 Dr Kaitlin Wade of the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit has been awarded this year’s CRUK Research Engagement Award in the category of Rising Star.
- Royal Society report on machine learning 27 June 2017 The Royal Society released a report in April 2017 entitled Machine learning: the power and promise of computers that learn by example. Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence that allows computer systems to learn directly from examples, data, and experience.
- Elizabeth Blackwell Institute funding 19 June 2017 The latest round of awards dispersed by the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research have been announced.
- Prehabilitation: boosting patients’ powers of recovery before surgery 13 June 2017 Improving patients’ health and fitness before a major operation can reduce the risk of complications and help recovery. Yet its potential has not been sufficiently explored. Researchers at Bristol aim to improve surgical outcomes in cancer patients by boosting health in the vital weeks before surgery.
- Informatics service support for health and biomedical research at the University of Bristol 13 June 2017 The Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research (EBI), through its Wellcome Trust ISSF Award, and match funded by the University of Bristol, invested in two posts that are openly available to help support all health and biomedical researchers across the University in their informatics needs.
- Feinstein Institute presents Cerami Award to Sir Paul Nurse for cancer research 26 May 2017 Northwell Health's Feinstein Institute for Medical Research and Molecular Medicine announced this week that the seventh Anthony Cerami Award in Translational Medicine will be awarded to Sir Paul Nurse, Director of The Francis Crick Institute and Chancellor of the University of Bristol.
- Novel targeting of disease causing cells could transform treatment of autoimmune diseases 24 May 2017 There is a problem with the traditional treatment of autoimmune and inflammatory conditions. Steroid therapy doesn’t always work, and immunosuppressant drugs can have toxic side effects. Bristol researchers, with the help of an award from the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute, are working to overcome this using novel ways of targeting disease causing cells.
- 'Gold standard’ model for evaluating novel therapies offers hope for children with leukaemia 9 May 2017 Leukaemia causes more deaths in childhood than any other cancer. New treatments are needed, but also more reliable tests to decide which drugs should go to clinical trial. Collaborative research at Bristol has delivered a pioneering model of childhood leukaemia that is far more accurate than standard laboratory tests in evaluating novel therapies.
- Centre for Cancer Epidemiology 28 April 2017 Caroline Relton and George Davey Smith recently visited Mumbai in India to attend the Scientific Symposium “Frontiers in Epidemiology”.
- New classification proposal for meningiomas 5 April 2017 A new paper published co-authored by Hayley Ellis and Prof Kathreena Kurian in Lancet Oncology proposes a new classification for meningiomas.
- Is there a link between telomere length and cancer? 23 March 2017 Telomeres are regions of repetitive DNA at the end of human chromosomes, which protect the end of the chromosome from damage. Whilst shorter telomeres are hypothesized biological markers of older age and have been linked to many diseases, including cancer and cardiovascular diseases, whether these associations are causal is unknown.
- New EBI Director from 1 August 2017 17 March 2017 following an open, internal, competitive appointment process, Professor Rachael Gooberman-Hill has been appointed to the role of Director of Elizabeth Blackwell Institute, which she will commence on 1 August 2017.
- Researchers to develop ‘wearable’ robotic tools for surgery 17 March 2017 A collaborative team of researchers is to develop a wearable robotic system for minimally invasive surgery, also known as keyhole surgery, that will offer surgeons natural and dexterous movement as well as the ability to ‘sense’, ‘see’, control and safely navigate through the surgical environment.
- Early career training and support 9 March 2017 The Faculties of Biomedical Sciences and Health Sciences have a dynamic postgraduate community enrolled in taught or research-based programmes. Postgrads receive their training in internationally renowned research groups which span the biomedical science disciplines of Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience through to the disciplines associated with population health which include life course epidemiology, genomics, primary care and public health with a particular emphasis on methodology.
- £7.5M boost for Health Research 8 March 2017 The Elizabeth Blackwell Institute (EBI) has been awarded the Wellcome Trust’s Institutional Strategic Support Fund (ISSF), designed to support biomedical research and related activities in the UK over the next five years. The ISSF award of £3.75M is being matched by the University. It is the third and largest ISSF award for the EBI and recognises the successful work the Institute has delivered during the previous five years.
- Convection enhanced delivery of a water insoluble drug shows early promise in targeting high grade brain tumours 6 March 2017 Findings from a study published in the International Journal of Nanomedicine have shown for the first time that the drug Panobinostat can be encapsulated in a water soluble molecule and delivered to a brain tumour to destroy high grade glioma cells.
- Helping the body’s own defences fight cancer cells 23 January 2017 Immunotherapy offers the big hope of teaching the body’s immune system to destroy cancer cells, but there’s a major obstacle: cancer cells can stop immune cells from recognising them as a threat.
- Engineering the future of cancer treatment 26 October 2016 Of the many new developments in cancer research, one of the most promising comes from nanoscience. Bioengineers are designing nanoparticles that can deliver treatments and diagnostics directly to tumours, raising the prospect of much more precise and effective interventions.
- Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland Small Grant 22 June 2016 Dr Harry Haynes (PhD student and Clinical Research Fellow, Brain Tumour Research Group; supervisor Dr Kathreena Kurian) has been awarded a Pathological Society Small Grant as an adjunct to his PhD funding.