Blog posts

The power of CAR-T cell therapy

The CAR – T Apheresis team with Professor Anastasios Karadimitris

To mark Blood Cancer Awareness Month, Dr Lucy Cook, Consultant Haematologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer from the Department of Immunology and Inflammation, shares how CAR-T cell therapy is transforming blood cancer treatment for patients.

September is Blood Cancer Awareness month, a time dedicated to raising awareness of blood cancers, which often don’t receive the same recognition as other types of cancer types. According to the charity Blood Cancer UK, over half of British adults cannot name a single blood cancer symptom. With over 100 different types of blood cancer, patients often know the name of their specific diagnosis (such as leukaemia, lymphoma, myeloma, myelodysplastic syndrome, CML etc.) but may not realise that these are all forms of blood cancer. Collectively, blood cancers are the third most common group of cancers. Raising awareness among both the public and health care professionals is critical to improving early detection and diagnosis.

At Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, September gives us the opportunity to reflect on the progress made since last year’s Blood Cancer Awareness Month.  One of the most exciting aspects has been the delivery of CAR-T cell therapy for lymphomas (a type of blood cancer that affects white blood cells) and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (a rare type of cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow). This year, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) also approved several new bispecific antibody therapies (BITEs) for lymphoma and myeloma (a type of cancer that develops from plasma cells in the bone marrow). BITEs are special proteins designed to help the immune system fight cancer. CAR-T and BITEs are a new wave of therapies, that harness the immune system to kill the cancer cells, rather than relying on conventional chemotherapy.  Following successful clinical trials, these therapies are now broadly approved for use in patients who have not responded to chemotherapy, offering potentially curative treatments for patients who previously faced poor prognoses. Clinical trials for CAR-T cell therapy are in progress for multiple myeloma, which is really exciting, offering hope for longer remissions for patients with a cancer subtype where no curative treatments currently exist.

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Staying active as we age: Reflections and tips on National Fitness Day

Professor Alison McGregor

To mark National Fitness Day, former NHS physiotherapist and elite sports researcher, Professor Alison McGregor from the Department of Surgery and Cancer, reflects on her lifelong passion for physical activity. She explores the benefits of staying active as we age, offering practical advice on breaking sedentary habits and maintaining fitness throughout life.

My career began as a physiotherapist in the NHS, but I dreamed about working in sport. At that time, I played a range of racquet sports and hockey. Oddly enough my engagement with elite sport came through my research career rather than my academic career. For nearly 18 years, I worked with elite rowers and the GB rowing team. In 2012, I had the honour of running with the Olympic torch in London, representing Imperial.  

My passion for sport and activity persists, and although I no longer compete, I run most days, cycle to work and occasionally go on long hikes and expeditions to stunning parts of the world including Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Machu Picchu in Peru, the Manaslu Circuit in Nepal and Hadrian’s Wall which is closer to home. But why do I remain so active as I get older? 

We all know that physical activity is good for our health and wellbeing. National Fitness Day is a great time to think about our lifestyle choices, particularly our balance of physical activity and sedentary activities.  Sitting for more than 6-8 hours – which many of us do during the average working day – is not good for us. So, how do we change this?  

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Better, quicker and more effective treatment for patients with sepsis

Sepsis kills five people every hour and accounts for about 50,000 deaths per year in the UK alone. To mark World Sepsis Day, Professor Anthony Gordon, Chief Investigator of the SepTiC study and Head of the Division of Anaesthetics, Pain Medicine and Intensive Care (APMIC), who is also a consultant in intensive care medicine and NIHR Senior Investigator, sheds light on how the study aims to find more effective treatment for sepsis patients.

Sepsis is one of the most serious conditions medical teams deal with. It’s life threatening and always considered a medical emergency. We don’t fully understand why it effects some people at different times but we do know it is caused by the immune system having an extreme response to an infection, most commonly due to an infection caused by bacteria. This causes organs to stop working properly and the body to damage itself because of that immune response, sometimes leading to multiple organ failure.

Patients with sepsis can deteriorate rapidly and this can sometimes be difficult to spot because the symptoms, such as fever, pain and breathlessness, are common to many other diseases. Anything we can do to improve care for these patients is vital to improving outcomes.

For patients receiving critical care in the intensive care unit, this can be even more challenging because they aren’t always able to tell us how they are feeling. But these patients are also at the highest risk because they are already so unwell.

This is why research to refine and improve treatments for sepsis is so vital – so we can respond as quickly as possible, in the most effective way, to help more patients make a full recovery, without lasting side effects.

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Know your numbers – How home monitoring is redefining hypertension care

Dr Amit KauraDr Amit Kaura, Honorary Clinical Lecturer in the National Heart and Lung Institute, discusses the future of blood pressure monitoring in this blog post for ‘Know your Numbers!’ week – a campaign encouraging people to check their blood pressure.

Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a major global health issue, affecting over 1.3 billion people. Yet, despite its prevalence, many people don’t fully understand what hypertension is, how it impacts health, and how they can manage it effectively.

Hypertension occurs when the force of blood against the walls of your arteries is consistently too high. This force, known as blood pressure, is measured in two numbers: systolic pressure, the pressure in your arteries when your heart beats, and diastolic pressure, the pressure when your heart is resting between beats. A normal blood pressure reading is considered to be around 120/80 mmHg, while readings consistently at 140/90 mmHg or higher indicate high blood pressure.

Often called the ‘silent killer,’ hypertension typically presents no symptoms until significant damage has occurred. Left unchecked, uncontrolled hypertension can lead to serious health issues, including heart disease, stroke, and kidney failure.

My journey into hypertension research is rooted in my background in data analytics in cardiovascular sciences. Hypertension, with its inherently numerical nature, fascinated me from the start. It is not just a static measurement; it is dynamic, with fluctuations that occur throughout the day and in response to various stimuli. This complexity piqued my interest and led me to explore the deeper intricacies of how we define and diagnose hypertension.

The traditional approach of diagnosing hypertension based on a single cut-off value – usually 140/90 mmHg – seemed overly simplistic to me. Through my research, I began to question whether this binary threshold truly captures the nuanced reality of hypertension. There is a wealth of data on the fluctuations and patterns of blood pressure that could offer more insight into cardiovascular risk than a one-time measurement.

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Embracing sleep for cognitive health: Insights from our recent study

Dr Raha West presenting her findings in South Korea

Are you a morning ‘lark’ or a night ‘owl and how is this linked to brain performance? To mark Sleeptember, Dr Raha West from the Department of Surgery and Cancer explores her recent research on over 26,000 people which found those who are naturally more active in the evening scored better on intelligence, reasoning and memory tests.

As we slip towards Sleeptember, a month dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of sleep, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the findings of our recent study published in the BMJ Public Health. Our analysis delves into how sleep duration, chronotype (whether you’re a morning person or an evening person), and various health and lifestyle factors influence cognitive performance in older adults. 

The Motivation Behind Our Study 

The importance of sleep in maintaining overall health, particularly brain health, has always intrigued me. The idea that our daily sleep patterns, including how long and when we sleep, could significantly impact our cognitive abilities led me to explore this further. Previous research has shown that poor sleep quality and duration are linked to various health issues. Still, the specific influence of chronotypes on cognition, especially in older adults, remains under-explored. 

Methodology and Participant Selection 

Our study utilised data from the UK Biobank, which includes a comprehensive set of health information from over half a million participants aged 40 and above. We focused on 26,820 individuals who completed detailed sleep and cognitive assessments. Participants were divided into two cohorts based on the cognitive tests they completed, ensuring a robust data analysis. 

Key Findings: Sleep Duration and Cognitive Performance 

We discovered that sleeping 7-9 hours per night is optimal for cognitive health. Both shorter and longer sleep durations were associated with poorer cognitive performance. This finding emphasise the importance of maintaining adequate sleep duration to support brain function.   

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Celebrating Regius Professor David Holden’s profound impact on microbiology at Imperial and beyond

In this piece Professor Ramesh Wigneshweraraj pays tribute to Professor David Holden, who retired as Regius Professor of Infectious Disease this summer.  

Foreword from Professor Deborah Ashby, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine 

I am very grateful to Ramesh for penning this wonderful tribute to Professor David Holden, who retired in May having contributed so much to his field and our university. 

His Regius Professorship in infectious disease was announced on 6 June 2016, when the honour was granted by Queen Elizabeth II as part of her 90th birthday celebrations. It was Imperial’s second, and at the time was one of only 26 Regius Professorships to have been granted since the reign of Queen Victoria. It recognised the world-leading infection research at Imperial that David has been the epitome of.

I congratulate David on all that he has achieved and wish him all the very best in his retirement.

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Completing the jigsaw: can milk banks contribute to transformed perinatal health in the UK?

Dr Natalie Shenker MBE

This week marks World Breastfeeding Week, a global campaign dedicated to informing, engaging, and galvanising action on breastfeeding and related issues. Dr Natalie Shenker MBE from the Department of Surgery and Cancer reflects on the progress made in related maternal health research in 2024, and explores how milk banks can help in the much-needed transformation of perinatal healthcare in the UK.

2024 has already been a remarkable year for human milk and lactation science. As interest grows globally in the sector, our understanding of the complex and ancient evolutionary physiological strategies involved, and their impact on infant and maternal health, deepens. The maternal health impacts of lactation and how to best support families are the key focuses of my research, and like much of the work across women’s health, has been largely ignored by mainstream science.  

In partnership with The George Institute, the new Women’s Health Network at Imperial College London is seeking to correct these crucial gaps. Excitingly, our study into the mechanisms through which breastfeeding can reduce the risk of certain types of cancer has received further funding from Breast Cancer Now. Yet, there is still so much to discover. Just last month an entirely new hormonal response that explains how breastfeeding protects against osteoporosis was described by scientists at UC Davis. They found bone metabolism increases during lactation to keep up with the large amount of calcium required to produce milk, at the same time as levels of the protective hormone oestrogen fall. Scientists were therefore previously stumped as to how breastfeeding prevents rather than causes maternal osteoporosis. The work, published in Nature, found that during breastfeeding, certain neurons in the brain called KISS1 neurons release a protein called CCN3. This protein helps increase bone repair, boosts the activity of skeletal stem cell activity and even speeds up how quickly fractures repair.

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Enhancing quality of life for head and neck cancer patients

 

Grainne Brady

Did you know that each year, amost 13,000 people in the UK will be given the news that they have head and neck cancer? Unfortunately, these numbers continue to rise. To mark World Head and Neck Cancer Day, we hear from Grainne Brady, PhD Student at Imperial’s Department of Surgery and Cancer, NIHR Clinical Doctoral Research Fellow and Speech Language Therapist at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust London. She shares her expertise on the link between head and neck cancer and changes to swallowing, communication and the potential impact on quality of life. 

Treatments for HNC include surgery, radiation and chemotherapy(1). Traditional risk factors for HNC include a history of tobacco and alcohol use (2). More recently, human papilloma virus (HPV) has been recognised as a risk factor for the development of oropharyngeal cancer which is a subtype of cancer affecting the back of the throat, tonsils, back of the tongue and soft palate (2). The discovery that a virus can cause this condition has led to the development of a UK-wide HPV vaccination programme available for both boys and girls aged 12-13 years (3). 

There have been huge advances in the treatment of HNC over the past two to – three decades. These include advanced radiation techniques like intensity-modulated radiation therapy and minimally invasive surgeries such as transoral robotic surgery, which are now standard of care techniques (4).   

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Postcards from Kampala: Data and Dashboards in Uganda

Nina Zhu enjoying coffee and a chat with Dr Sanjeev Singh, CAMO-Net India lead
Nina Zhu enjoying coffee and a chat with Dr Sanjeev Singh, CAMO-Net India lead

The Centres for Antimicrobial Optimisation Network (CAMO-Net) recently convened an insightful meeting at Makerere University in Uganda. This international event brought together researchers dedicated to the critical challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Throughout the week, attendees engaged in a series of informative presentations exploring data-driven approaches to optimising antibiotic use. Hear first-hand from Dr Nina Zhu from the Department of Infectious Disease on what her experience at the event was like. 

I recently returned from Kampala, Uganda, where I spent an incredible week at Makerere University for the Centres for Antimicrobial Optimisation Network (CAMO-Net) event. Colleagues from around the world came together in Kampala to share knowledge, take part in workshops, and learn more about the work our Uganda National Hub does to address antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in Africa and beyond. 

Data and Dashboards for Optimising Antibiotic Use 

The event’s theme was ‘Data and Dashboards’. Harnessing the power of data through strategic and targeted studies to generate new knowledge related to optimising antimicrobial use is a key theme of CAMO-Net. As my work focuses on using data linkage and system dynamics modelling to understand healthcare-associated infections and AMR, it was a perfect week for me!  

I was joined in Kampala by CAMO-Net members from four other countries: Brazil, India, Malawi, and South Africa. We received such a warm welcome from our Ugandan hosts and started the week with a networking session at a local restaurant. At the reception, Dr Andrew Kambugu, CAMO-Net Uganda lead and head of Makerere’s Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) gave a fascinating showcase of IDI’s history. It was a perfect blend of networking and getting to know more about the impressive strides IDI has made in infectious diseases, data, and AMR. 

Professor Umar Kakumba, the 1st Deputy Vice Chancellor of Makerere University, and Dr Andrew Kambugu, CAMO-Net Uganda lead, welcomed the whole CAMO-Net team

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St Mary’s Medical School: End of a chapter

Professor John Tregonning (front centre) in the early days of his career in the Department of Surgery and Cancer.

As the Faculty of Medicine prepares for the full decant of the St Mary’s Medical School Building, Professor John Tregoning, Professor in Vaccine Immunology in the Department of Infectious Disease, takes a trip down memory lane, reflecting on almost 20 years spent working in the “site steeped with history.”

On the 1st of August 2024, as part of a wider departmental move, I will leave the St Mary’s Hospital campus having worked there for nearly half my life. As such, it felt like time to reflect.

I first crossed the threshold when the St Mary’s medical school had just merged with Imperial in 1999, visiting friends who were studying there. Admittedly, it was not in an academic capacity. I went to the long-closed, but legendary bar in the basement (allegedly it closed because seeing future doctors heavily inebriated was off-putting to those visiting the hospital). I don’t remember much of that night, a fact I am putting down to time passed, rather than beers consumed.

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