For our staff profile series, we spoke to Alastair Webb, our new Clinical Reader in Stroke Medicine about his recent move to Imperial College London, his research on cerebrovascular disease, and his passion for improving stroke treatment.
Introduce yourself – who are you and what do you do?
I’m Alastair Webb, the new Clinical Reader in Stroke Medicine and an academic vascular neurologist. As such, I balance my time between clinical work in acute stroke and outpatient neurovascular clinics with my research. This covers a broad range of activities from big data analysis, MRI imaging analysis, patient cohorts, human face-to-face cerebrovsacular physiology right down to interventional mechanistic trials.
Can you tell us about your career so far – when did you join the college, and where were you working or studying before this?
I’m excited to have just joined Imperial in March 2024, having spent the last 20 years in Oxford, firstly training as doctor and subsequently as a clinical academic for the past 13 years at the Wolfson Centre for Prevention of Stroke and Dementia.
Can you explain a bit more about your research interest and what you will work on at Imperial?
I’m particularly interested in how cerebrovascular physiology and the effects of hypertension and aging drive cerebrovascular disease, and therefore whether we can develop new treatments for it. My specific area of interest is ‘cerebral small vessel disease’ which reflects chronic damage to the small blood vessels in the brain and causes 30% of strokes due to blood clots, 80% of bleeds in the brain and is the commonest cause of vascular dementia, but we still have no treatment for it. At Imperial, I plan to tackle this problem by developing a new cohort of patients with a much broader range of small vessel disease than is usually included in studies, and to study their cerebrovascular physiology in more detail. In addition, I then aim to test the effects of different drugs to see if we can improve the abnormal physiology we find in these people, and then test whether these drugs then improve their risk of stroke and dementia. This builds on my previous work showing that sildenafil, more commonly known as viagra, improves cerebrovascular function and is a promising new drug that may be beneficial in these patients.
What initially sparked your interest in your current field of research?
I have always enjoyed and been interested in physiology and neurology, and wanted to make an impact on a disease that has very significant effects on people. Therefore, when I started training as a neurologist, I wanted to focus on cerebrovascular disease and dementia due to how common it is and how much disability it causes. However, I realised that we still have very limited understanding of the abnormal physiology of the blood vessels in the brain in patients at risk, particularly in the area of chronic small vessel disease, and yet there are lots of drugs that already exist that effect these blood vessels. This seemed like a clear target where we could make a real difference in this disease fairly quickly.
What aspect of your new role are you most excited about?
I’m very excited about building a new research programme from scratch, particularly to build the collaborations and teamwork required to make such a programme effective. In particular, Imperial has such a breadth of expertise and enthusiasm in areas ranging from medicine to trials to technical innovation that the opportunities to have a real impact are fantastic.
When you are not working, what are your main passions and hobbies?
When not working, I I’m mostly with my family, whether spending time with the kids, walking in the Oxfordshire countryside or ferrying them from place to place!
If you were exiled to a desert island but allowed one luxury item, what would it be?
I think I would have to take John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ and something to play it on, to relax to in the sunshine.