24 July 2012
A new centre based at Imperial, funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the College, will provide a ‘centre of excellence’ in the fight against bacterial infections, many of which have undergone a significant rise in recent years.
Tags: Life Sciences, Medical Research Council, Medicine
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22 June 2012
A major new research facility on Imperial’s Hammersmith Campus, designed to expand and accelerate the translation of scientific discoveries into new ways of preventing, diagnosing and treating diseases, was officially opened by George Osborne MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 28 May.
Tags: Imperial Centre for Translational and Experimental Medicine, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust
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28 May 2012
Imanova, a new state-of-the- art imaging centre co-owned by the Medical Research Council and three of London’s leading universities, was formally launched on 5 May at a showcase event attended by representatives from the founding organisations and the Rt Hon. David Willetts MP, Minister for Universities and Science.
Imanova is a pioneering public-private collaboration formed by the Medical Research Council, King’s College London, UCL and Imperial. From a facility previously run by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, Imanova now plans to become an internationally renowned imaging centre and the partner of choice for industry and academia.
Read the full press release here
Tags: Medical Research Council
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4 April 2012
Imperial researchers will begin the largest clinical trial of its type to test a new gene therapy treatment for people with cystic fibrosis (CF) thanks to a new grant from a government funding body.
One hundred and thirty adults and children with CF will take part in the trial starting this spring coordinated by the UK Cystic Fibrosis Gene Therapy Consortium (GTC). The GTC is a group of scientists and clinical teams from Imperial, the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh, Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust and NHS Lothian, who have worked together for the last decade to develop gene therapy for CF.
The trial will be funded by a £3.1 million grant from the National Institute for Health Research and the Medical Research Council.
CF is the most common lethal inherited disease in the UK, affecting around 9,500 people nationally and over 90,000 worldwide. Patients’ lungs become filled with thick sticky mucus and they are vulnerable to recurrent chest infections, which eventually destroy the lungs. The cause of CF, mutations in a gene located on chromosome 7, was identified in 1989, opening the door to replacing this faulty gene using gene therapy.
Patients will receive the treatment by inhaling molecules of DNA wrapped in fat globules that deliver the replacement gene into the cells in the lung lining. Half the participants will receive the real treatment and half a placebo in a doubleblind study.
Professor Eric Alton (NHLI), the GTC Coordinator, said: “This trial will assess if giving gene therapy repeatedly for a year will lead to the patients’ lungs getting better. Eventually we hope gene therapy will push CF patients towards a normal life expectancy and improve their quality of life significantly.”
Read the full press release here
Tags: Medical Research Council, National Heart and Lung Institute, Royal Brompton Campus
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21 February 2012
Research into acute asthma attacks has been given a helping hand with a £4 millon award from the Medical Research Council (MRC) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
The grant, to the MRC-Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma at Imperial and King’s College London, will enable researchers to investigate how acute asthma attacks, which can be lifethreatening and are often resistant to the few available treatments, are linked to allergy and viral infection. Professor Sebastian Johnston (NHLI) and Dr Roberto Solari of GSK will lead three teams of scientists at Imperial, King’s and GSK.
Tags: Medical Research Council, National Heart and Lung Institute
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31 October 2011
Long server Dr Elizabeth Lighstone, Reader and Honorary Consultant in Renal Medicine, (Medicine) speaks to Reporter about her twenty years of service to the College.
Tags: Medical Research Council, Medicine
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13 October 2011
On 11 October, Imperial celebrated officially joining The Francis Crick Institute at an event in King’s Cross. The Institute – a £650 million world class interdisciplinary biomedical research institute set to open in 2015 – was founded by the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust and UCL. Reporter speaks to Professor Maggie Dallman, Principal of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, about her involvement in the project and what it means to Imperial.
Tags: Business School, Cancer Research UK, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Medical Research Council, Rector, The Francis Crick Institute, the Wellcome Trust
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29 June 2011
Researchers from the BHF Centre of Research Excellence at Imperial have won two awards in the British Heart Foundation’s research image competition, Reflections of Research. The Centre’s prizewinning entries were an animated representation of blood flow, created by Dr Ana Plata (NHLI) and colleagues, and a 3D reconstruction of a congenitally malformed heart, created by Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan (NHLI) and her colleagues.
Read more about the winning entries at http://bit.ly/impheart
Tags: British Heart Foundation, Medical Research Council, Medicine
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9 June 2011
Professor Nicholas Franks, Head of the Division of Cell and Molecular Biology (Life Sciences) and Professor of Biophysics and Anaesthetics, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of his research contribution to the field of general anaesthetics.
Tags: Awards and Honours, Division of Cell and Molecular Biology, Life Sciences, Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust
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9 June 2011
Giving fluids rapidly through a drip into a vein (fluid resuscitation), as an emergency treatment for African children suffering with shock from severe infections, does not save lives, according to a major clinical trial led by Imperial scientists. The groundbreaking research showed that giving children fluids slowly to a sick child who cannot drink, is safer and more effective than rapid fluid resuscitation in aiding recovery. The findings challenge current World Health Organisation guidelines on how best to provide fluids to children in Africa with fever and shock.
Tags: Medical Research Council, Medicine
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7 March 2011
Grant funding of £2.5 million has been awarded to a research project investigating a drug intended to make IVF safer. The study involves collaboration between researchers Dr Waljit Dhillo, Professor Steve Bloom (both Medicine), Professor Deborah Ashby (Public Health) and Dr Geoffrey Trew (Surgery and Cancer).
Tags: Faculty of Medicine, Medical Research Council, Medicine, News, Public Health, Surgery and Cancer
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17 February 2011
Boys predominantly pass on flu to other boys and girls to girls, according to a new study of how swine flu spread in a primary school during the 2009 pandemic, published on 30 January in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Tags: Faculty of Medicine, Medical Research Council
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23 November 2010
A variant of last year’s pandemic influenza linked to fatal cases carried a mutation enabling it to infect a different subset of cells lining the airway, according to new research published in the Journal of Virology on 22 October by the Department of Medicine, the Medical Research Council National Institute for Medical Research and the University of Marburg.
Tags: Faculty of Medicine, Medical Research Council
Posted in College, Research | No Comments »
17 February 2010
Tags: Issue 214, Medical Research Council, News
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