Tag: Global health

Fleming’s Final Flourish

Professor John Tregoning, Professor of Vaccine Immunology in the Department of Infectious Disease, explores the legacy of Sir Alexander Fleming and the urgent fight against antimicrobial resistance. From the historic discovery of penicillin at St Mary’s Medical School to the ambitious Fleming Initiative, Professor Tregoning discusses how a groundbreaking new centre aims to tackle one of the greatest challenges in modern medicine.

If you were watching the Royal Institution (RI) Christmas Lectures with Dr Chris van Tulleken, you will have seen two plates of food disintegrate into a mushy goo. This was filmed at the St Mary’s Medical School Building in Paddington, London. In fact, it was probably the last ever experiment done in this hallowed building. In some ways it seems appropriate that it involved mould. St Mary’s will always be famous as the site of where Sir Alexander Fleming performed his breakthrough studies. Or as he modestly put it: ‘revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic’. 

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Beyond survival: Why cancer survivorship matters

Professor Pernilla Lagergren

This festive period, Three Wise Women from the Faculty of Medicine will be giving us the gift of wisdom.

When cancer treatment ends, a new journey begins—one filled with unique challenges. Professor Pernilla Lagergren, Chair in Surgical Care Sciences at the Department of Surgery and Cancer, explores what life is like after cancer treatment. Drawing on her clinical experience with oesphageal and gastric cancer patients, she shares how her survivorship research is helping to shape better outcomes for patients, their families, and the healthcare system. 

When people think about cancer, they often focus on the illness itself—the diagnosis, the treatments, and the fight to survive. But once the treatment ends, another important challenge begins: what happens after cancer? As a researcher in cancer survivorship, my focus is on understanding what life is like for people who have been treated for cancer, and how we can improve that life for them. 

Here, I’ll explore the significance of cancer survivorship research, the insights we’ve gained, and what drives my commitment to this field. I‘ll also highlight how my work contributes to improving the lives of cancer survivors, supporting their families, and strengthening the healthcare system. 

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When science meets serendipity: How accidental discoveries could revolutionise women’s health

Professor Aylin Hanyaloglu

This festive period, Three Wise Women from the Faculty of Medicine will be giving us the gift of wisdom.

Aylin Hanyaloglu, Professor in Molecular Medicine in the Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, reflects on the role of serendipity in both scientific discovery and her own 17-year research career at Imperial. She explores how unexpected findings—like those in her team’s research on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs)—can lead to breakthroughs that shape the future of medicine. From fertility treatments to the quest for more precise drugs, Aylin discusses how curiosity and embracing the unexpected have driven her team’s progress.

Serendipity—the fact of finding valuable or interesting things by chance—has long been a key element in scientific research. This is exemplified by Sir Alexander Fleming’s accidental discovery of penicillin, which revolutionised medicine: “I did not invent penicillin. Nature did that. I only discovered it by accident.” With this definition, serendipity for me has played a significant role in both the discoveries in our research as well as my career journey. This time of year offers opportunities to reflect on different areas in our lives, and I have often used the term serendipity for describing my journey. But what do I mean by this? Is it needed or just a normal part of the discovery process? And with the rapidly evolving landscape of how science is conducted, will this continue? 

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World AIDS Day 2024: ‘Take the rights path’

Sarah Fidler and Jonas Bergmann Poulsen

To mark World AIDS Day, Professor Sarah Fidler from the Department of Infectious Disease, and student, Jonas Bergmann from the University of Amsterdam, reflect on the evolution of HIV treatment and the ongoing challenges. They discuss the impact of stigma, the importance of accessible medication, and the role of community-led initiatives in supporting those living with HIV. 

Professor Sarah Fidler

My first experience of HIV was in 1988 when I was 24 years old. I had just qualified as a junior doctor.  As I started work on the respiratory ward, there were several young people who were inpatients. This was unusual for an acute medical ward, which treats patients with urgent medical conditions. Our patients were a similar age to me, but these young people – who should have had their whole lives ahead of them were isolated, sick and dying.  

 Not only were they dying, but they were dying with a health condition that also affected their partners, all while  facing fear, judgement and stigmatisation. As a result, many had no family with them to help ease their passing – just prejudice, homophobia and ignorance. We had no medicines that could reverse the medical complications, nothing that could make them better. All we could do was to care for them as best we could, providing empathy, kindness and medical support to ease their journey.  

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How medicine and medical research has contributed to HIV stigma–and how we challenge it

Alan Winston

World AIDS Day is a vital opportunity to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and honour those whose lives have been affected by the disease. Professor Alan Winston from the Department of Infectious Disease explores how language and scientific definitions have contributed to the stigmatisation of those living with the disease and emphasises the need for person-centred language and thoughtful scientific communication to reduce discrimination in medicine and medical research. 

The initial fear 

Since AIDS–Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome–was first identified in the 1980s, along with its underlying cause–the Human Immune Deficiency virus (HIV)– people living with HIV have encountered immense discrimination and stigma. Whilst this was partly driven by fear of the disease itself and the devastating clinical consequences of HIV without treatment, we should acknowledge that both physicians and scientists have contributed to this stigma. Here, I highlight how this has been mediated through language and scientific definitions. Although these contributors have likely not been intentional, going forward, we need to learn from past experiences and carefully consider how, as clinicians, clinical researchers and scientists, our work can focus on reducing the stigma and discrimination that has surrounded HIV for so many decades. 

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Bladder problems: Can we be less shy about having a pee?

Prof Marcus Drake

Bladder problems affect millions of people around the world, yet they remain shrouded in silence and embarrassment. Professor Marcus Drake, Chair in Neurological Urology, explores why society continues to be shy about this topic, and highlights why more medical research is needed to improve bladder care.

People do not generally spend a lot of time thinking about their bladder. After all, each pee only takes about 20 seconds. Since we might go for a pee just six times a day, that means only a couple of minutes are given over to the bladder daily.

As well as not thinking about it much, we also seem to be reluctant to talk about it. This may be a reflection on society, since peeing is a vital function yet talking about it seems to be discouraged. Perhaps this does not matter so much for most people. But it does matter for anyone with a bladder problem. This reluctance means that people can leave it very late to get help. For many it makes the experience of getting help difficult too.

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Closing the Gender Health Gap: A Call for Sex and Gender Equity in Biomedical Research Policies

When it comes to healthcare, there are clear and stark inequalities between women and men. Marina Politis, Alice Witt, and Kate Womersley explain how, at its root, this gender health gap derives from a research and data gap, and how the MESSAGE project is working to improve accounting of sex and gender dimensions in medical research.

Everyone aspires to receive gold standard treatment when seeking medical care. What if, however, this standard, was only ever set out to be gold for one group of people? Much of our medical evidence base has been based on a male norm, with women underrepresented at all stages of the research pipeline. Subsequently, when a woman suffers an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, she is less likely to receive bystander CPR than a man. Once in the hospital, she continues to be less likely to receive optimal care than her male counterpart.

The gender health gap in cardiovascular disease – poorer outcomes women experience due to the “male default” in health research and healthcare – is just one of many conditions for which there are disparities between women and men. From dementia to diabetes, and osteoporosis to obesity, sex and gender differences and similarities remain neglected in UK and international research.

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Margaret Turner Warwick Centre: Can we take your breath away?

The Great Exhibition Road Festival is a free annual celebration of science and the arts each summer in South Kensington. The event showcases a diverse range of activities for people of all ages.  One of those activities, led by researchers from the Margaret Turner Warwick Centre and volunteers from the charity Action for Pulmonary Fibrosis, included an interactive activity that gave the public the opportunity to walk in the shoes of someone living with pulmonary fibrosis. Find out first-hand from Elisabeth Pyman, what happened on the day and hear from pulomary fibrosis patient, Andy, what it’s like to live with the condition.

The June weekend of the Great Exhibition Road Festival was one of quintessential British summertime weather. This celebration of science was hosted by Imperial College London in collaboration with the local community and provided a wide range of topics for people of all ages to explore. Under intermittent spells of rain, crowds of a multitudinous diversity explored the “awe and wonder” of science, the theme of this year’s festival. To welcome the public, artists and scientists populated the streets and buildings surrounding Imperial’s South Kensington campus like a sudden desert bloom.

Meanwhile, another transformation was taking place in a stand tucked away at the end of the road in the Creative Science zone. Researchers from the Margaret Turner Warwick Centre and volunteers from the charity Action for Pulmonary Fibrosis were on a mission to spread awareness about a rare lung condition known as pulmonary fibrosis. This condition is associated with a build-up of scar tissue that leads to a steady decline in lung function, with many patients becoming terminal only five years after diagnosis. Currently, there are 32,500 UK residents living with a diagnosis, but the actual number of people affected is estimated at around 100,000.

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HIV antiretroviral therapy: Getting to the heart of the matter

The HIV landscape has completely transformed since the start of the pandemic. A HIV diagnosis in the 1980s was considered fatal, as people usually progressed to AIDS due to the lack of available treatments. 42 years later, we have an array of different drug options and as a result, people diagnosed with HIV today can now expect to have near-normal life expectancies. Here, Dr Akif Khawaja from the National Heart & Lung Institute (NHLI), highlights the impact of HIV treatment over the last 42 years and how it influences cardiovascular research today.

HIV Treatment: from AZT to U=U

At the start of the pandemic, there were no available treatments. Patients would progress to AIDS and were only offered palliative care. It wasn’t until 1987 that the first antiretroviral drug, zidovudine (AZT), was licenced for the treatment of HIV. A major challenge with HIV treatment soon became apparent, as the virus can rapidly mutate and change its genetic code to become resistant to the drug supressing its replication. This challenge was quickly seen by clinicians as their patients would start to rebound from antiretroviral monotherapy (one drug regimens) as HIV became drug resistant and was able to replicate again. The introduction of combination antiretroviral therapy in 1996 has been monumental to HIV management. A change in treatment guidelines meant that patients who would have previously been given one drug, were now given three drug combinations, each targeting different parts of the HIV life cycle. This approach meant that patients could suppress HIV replication and achieve a sustained undetectable viral load, meaning that the level of virus in their blood is so low, it can no longer be detected by diagnostic tests.

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Professor Sir Peter Barnes knighted for excellence: Reflections on his career in respiratory science

Professor Sir Peter Barnes FRS FMedSci, from the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI), was made a Knight Bachelor in this year’s King’s Birthday Honours “for services to respiratory science.” Sir Peter is Professor of Thoracic Medicine at the NHLI and he was Head of Respiratory Medicine at Imperial until 2017. Here he writes about his reaction to his award and describes some of the current research projects in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

A surprise! 

My wife opened the letter “On His Majesty’s Service” as she thought it was a tax demand – I was absolutely shocked to see I had been offered a knighthood. Of course, I was and am delighted with the award. It is very good for respiratory science and medicine, which generally receives little public attention. This is surprising as chronic lung diseases are amongst the most common in the UK, affecting one in seven people and the third ranked cause of death. I would like to dedicate this award to all the brilliant students, post-docs, research fellows, visiting scientists and colleagues that I have worked with at Imperial College London over many decades.  

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