Month: December 2015

Call for 1-Year Clinical Training Fellowships in Global Health Research

We are looking to support outstanding early-career clinical professionals wishing to undertake research, at least in part overseas, to improve the health of people and reduce health inequalities in developed and developing countries. Through the provision of clinical training fellowships in global health, we aim to provide opportunities for the most promising clinical academics, at the very beginning of their careers, to develop bids for independent fellowship funding. We anticipate that each fellow will be supported by two mentors, one based at an Imperial Campus, and one based overseas. All fellowships must commence by 1 September, 2016.

How to apply?

Please refer to the Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund webpage for application forms and guidelines.

If you have an Imperial and overseas sponsor, please contact ISSF@imperial.ac.uk for an application form and further information. Should you be an interested applicant looking for a sponsor, please provide a max 500 word summary of your interests, brief summary of project and research experience to ISSF@imperial.ac.uk by 25 January 2016. We cannot guarantee that all interested applicants will be matched with an overseas sponsor. Full applications would need to be submitted by 4 March 2016 to ISSF@imperial.ac.uk. Interviews for shortlisted candidates are expected to take place the week commencing 2 May 2016.

This Fellowship program is funded through the Global Health Stream of the Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund, and lead by the Imperial Wellcome Trust Global Health Research Centre in conjunction with the Institute for Global Health Innovation.

For further information please contact:

Dr Kimberley Trim, Faculty of Medicine,
Imperial College London SW7 2AZ UK
Tel: 020 7594 9826
E-mail: ISSF@imperial.ac.uk

Committed to equality and valuing diversity. We are also an Athena SWAN Silver Award winner, a Stonewall Diversity Champion, a two Ticks Employer and are working in partnership with GIRES to promote respect for trans people.

Macrophage exosomes induce placental inflammatory cytokines: a novel mode of maternal-placental messaging

Congratulations to Dr Beth Holder on getting this beautiful paper published and thanks to the collaborators within and outside of the department who helped to facilitate the work with all the various techniques.

Beth recently presented the work at the International Symposium for Maternal and Neonatal Immunisation and her talk was praised as an outstanding contribution, particularly by our US attendees. This work was funded through the Imperial NIHR Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) and the Medical Research Council.

Abstract

During pregnancy, the placenta forms the interface between mother and fetus. Highly controlled regulation of trans-placental trafficking is therefore essential for the healthy development of the growing fetus. Extracellular vesicle-mediated transfer of protein and nucleic acids from the human placenta into the maternal circulation is well documented; the possibility that this trafficking is bi-directional has not yet been explored but could affect placental function and impact on the fetus. We hypothesized that the ability of the placenta to respond to maternal inflammatory signals is mediated by the interaction of maternal immune cell exosomes with placental trophoblast. Utilising the BeWo cell line and whole placental explants, we demonstrated that the human placenta internalizes macrophage-derived exosomes in a time- and dose-dependent manner. This uptake was via clathrin-dependent endocytosis. Furthermore, macrophage exosomes induced production of proinflammatory cytokines by the placenta. Taken together, our data demonstrates that exosomes are actively transported into the human placenta and that exosomes from activated immune cells modulate placental cytokine production. This represents a novel mechanism by which immune cells can signal to the placental unit, potentially facilitating responses to maternal inflammation and infection, and thereby preventing harm to the fetus.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tra.12352/abstract

Jane Webb
Secretary for the Section of Paediatrics and Personal Assistant to the Head of Department, Professor Andrew Bush.

LKCMedicine clinical leads visit Imperial

LKCMedicine clinical leads visit Imperial
A delegation from the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine in Singapore visited Imperial in November.

The week-long LKCMedicine visit included meetings with clinical counterparts; visits to Imperial’s teaching sites Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, Charing Cross Hospital and West Middlesex Hospital; observation of a Year 5 significant educational activity; the Faculty of Medicine conference, the teaching awards and Professor Timothy Orchard’s inaugural lecture, ‘Speaking from the gut’.

“It is always a pleasure to welcome our colleagues from LKCMedicine to Imperial,” said Paul Ratcliffe, Deputy Director of Education Management.

“It has been a great opportunity to introduce them to many of our excellent NHS teachers and colleagues involved in delivering education. I was also delighted that the visit coincided with the faculty education forum and that our visitors were able to contribute to this.”

At the conference, Dr Kemp of LKCMedicine gave a presentation on the transition to learning in clinical settings. Associate Professor Wong took part in a panel discussion on ‘the making of a doctor: how to help our students navigate the transition from school child to foundation school’.

The trip also provided an opportunity for both the clinical leads and the Imperial curriculum team to discuss the delivery of the Year 4 curriculum and discuss plans for assessment.

LKCMedicine opened in 2013 as a collaboration between Imperial College London and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore with an inaugural cohort of 54. The school is now in its third year of operation with 222 students.

The students pursue an innovative curriculum developed jointly by Imperial and LKCMedicine, and gain experience in a wide range of clinical settings from an early stage in the course, making extensive use of technology and team-based learning.

Ben Campion
Communications Manager
Imperial College School of Medicine

Mr Chris Lattimer receives Bronze Award from the American College of Phlebology

Mr Chris Lattimer
Mr Chris Lattimer

It gives me great pleasure to inform you that Imperial College have once again won a prestigious international award from the Josef Pflug Vascular Laboratory (Ealing Hospital & Imperial College).

This time is was the Bronze Award for best oral presentation at the American College of Phlebology held in Orlando this year at their 29th Annual Congress.

The title was: ‘Evaluation of the pumping performance of common peroneal nerve stimulation using air-plethysmography‘.

The award ceremony was held at the Hilton Bonnet Creek Hotel on 15th November 2015 where Dr Armen Roupenian presented the certificate to me with a monetary prize.

The work explained how the calf muscle pump works in augmenting the venous return and the contribution of the GEKO device in achieving this target. Suggestions were made as to how the device could be improved to maximise efficiency in the prevention of DVT.

Mr Chris Lattimer
Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer
Department of Surgery and Cancer

Professor Beate Kampmann nominated to join Expert Database for Outstanding Female Academics

Professor Beate Kampmann has been nominated by the Medical Research Council (MRC) to join AcademiaNet – Expert Database for Outstanding Female Academics.

Professor Beate Kampmann The Robert Bosch Stiftung, in cooperation with Spektrum der Wissenschaft (Nature Publishing Group), has set up this exclusive expert database in 2010. It was launched by German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel and it is the only Web site of its kind that shows profiles only of outstandingly qualified women who are best in their field. They all have been nominated by highly recognized science and research institutions. To date, more than 1,700 profiles of female top-class researchers of all disciplines are in the database.

The website (www.academia-net.org) is supplemented by editorials such as up-to-date news reports, scientific articles and interviews with female scientists and has registered over one million clicks to date. The high number of visitors to the database is not the only indication of its success: all four female scientists awarded the Leibniz Prize in 2014 – the most important research prize in Germany – are members of AcademiaNet.