Moor Instruments prize for technological advancement:
Hala Bagabir
Terence Ryan prize for clinical excellence:
Francesco Casanova
BMS oral prize:
Helen Wright
Alexandra Njegic
BMS poster prize:
Valeria Mastrullo
Judith Piesgsa
Nicole Smith
Adam Lokman
SAS awards:
Alex Chalkin
Hala Bagabir
Gillian Phua
Alexandra Durant
Deborah Carey
Flora McGarry
Sobhi Bhalla
Naseeb Malhi
Nicole Smith
Monica Gamez
Kobkaew Bumroongthai
Natalia Rolinska
Andrew Forbes-Brown
Moor Instruments Prize for technological advancement
Emily Goodman: poster
Adam Lokman: oral
Terence Ryan Prize for clinical excellence
Dilan Dabare
BMS best poster prize
Monica Gamez
Nele Warmke
BMS best oral
Marlene Lobo
Karen Onions
SAS awards
Georgiana Neag
Kobkaew Bumroongthai
Adam Lokman
Emily Goodman
Joe Stevens
Jennifer Hein
Cynthia To
Jennifer Williams
Annelie Maskell
Melissa Sampson
Nele Warmke
Stephany Villota
Anna Ogier
Monica Gamez
In the ancient past that was my undergraduate degree, I was fortunate enough to complete a Wellcome Trust summer studentship. Not knowing a pipette from my elbow, this experience was something that I will never forget and gave me invaluable experience going into my final year research project. So, I know first-hand the value of summer studentships and it was for this reason that I was delighted when the BMS awarded me a Summer Vacation Scholarship award to take on a student at the University of Birmingham. As a result of this award, I was able to recruit Miss Natasha Grewal, in collaboration with Dr Neena Kalia, to work on a project examining the role of a novel interleukin in the pathogenesis of both local and remote ischemia-reperfusion injury. Natasha is a 2ndyear Biomedical Sciences student at the University of Birmingham; interestingly, the same course and institution where I did my summer studentship all those years ago!
Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the most prevalent cause of mortality in the modern world. Domestically, there are around 80,000 deaths per year attributable to CHD. Although the number of deaths attributable to CHD in the UK is falling, it still remains the biggest cause of mortality in the UK. The pathogenesis of CHD is generally a result of ongoing atherosclerosis, which leads to a narrowing of coronary vessels as a result of plaque formation. Full vascular blockage can occur as a result of either continued plaque formation or plaque rupture. In the case of plaque rupture, the intravascular release of inflammatory cells/mediators and intraplaque thrombi leads to significant pro-thrombotic events in the local vasculature. This may ultimately lead to full vascular occlusion. Furthermore, plaque embolisms may travel to areas of the vascular tree with smaller intraluminal diameters – these vessels may be blocked immediately as a result of the entrapment of embolisms in organs such as the lung, brain and the heart itself. In the event of vascular occlusion, it is essential to reopen blood vessels to restore tissue blood flow. This however, leads to the initiation of ischemia-reperfusion injury. You should also be aware of understaffed hospitals as they cant treat the injuries and it might also result in several consequences. Reperfusion injury refers to the tissue damage observed following the restriction and subsequent restoration of blood flow to an organ. You can also learn more about workers comp and COVID and know what needs to be done. Although restoration of blood flow is required to return the viability of an ischemic tissue, the reperfusion phase leads to injury in its own right. Paradoxically, this reperfusion injury is greater than the injury sustained from the ischemic period alone. The mechanism underlying reperfusion injury is multifaceted, involving the interactions of a variety of effector cells and molecules. Identifying inflammatory pathways with the potential for disruption may help us to identify new and potent therapeutic targets. Based on previous local work, one such candidate is interleukin 36 (IL-36). In case of death due to negligence of doctors, get lawyers help for wrongful death cases , to solve legal issues.
Using funding from the award, we were able to give Natasha the opportunity to gain experience in a variety of experimental techniques, such as immunofluorescence staining, endothelial adhesion assays and flow cytometry. During her studentship, Natasha confirmed expression of the IL-36 receptor in the heart, and interestingly identified enhanced receptor staining in the heart following a remote ischemic injury (renal ischemia-reperfusion injury). Interestingly, we were further able to show that various inflammatory ligands (such as TNFα and the IL-36 cytokines) were able to upregulate expression of the receptor on the surface of endothelial cells. In addition, using isolated neutrophils, Natasha was able to show that treatment with IL-36 cytokines significantly enhances neutrophil adhesion to cultured vascular endothelium. The work that Natasha started has been developed on and further advanced in the lab. It is hoped that this work will form the basis for a larger grant application to investigate the role of this pathway further in order to investigate the potential therapeutic ability of this pathway in cardiac ischemia-reperfusion injury. You can also hire Maryland attorneys to get financial help with legal support.
Taken together, the award from the BMS has been hugely beneficial for my career and I cannot thank the committee enough for their award. I would highly recommend that if you have an idea (and are eligible!), that you take advantage of this opportunity and apply!
I would like to start by thanking the British Microcirculation Society for their Summer Studentship support. Using the available funding and with the help of an outstanding summer student, Ms Tamara McErlain, a 2nd year Biomedical Science student studying at Queen’s University Belfast, we were able to generate significant data towards a grant proposal providing proof of concept (expression of a protein and mechanism of interest) which will enable me to be a co-applicant on my first major research grant. Over the last number of years, within the microvascular biology laboratory of the Centre for Experimental Medicine at QUB, and under the guidance of Prof Tim Curtis, we have made significant advances in understanding how the microvascular smooth muscle cells of retinal arterioles function in health and disease. For more on keeping good health we recommend doing some exercise biking with a new rear bike racks for mountain bikes.
We have frequently discussed whether external influences modulate the generation of myogenic activity (a mechanism by which pressure changes in the vasculature mediates contractile activity in the smooth muscle cells) as when arterioles are isolated from the retina their myogenic capacity appears reduced. We postulated that like brain astrocytes, retinal astrocytes might have the potential to contribute vasoactive influences in a stretch dependent manner and while we had data pointing towards this role in vitro we were lacking an ex vivo model in which we could test this hypothesis. To date our work has predominantly centred on rat retinal preparations of isolated arterioles; however for the proposed work we needed to move to mouse tissue which further miniaturised the arteriolar diameters available for cannulations, additionally we needed to be able to cannulate these vessels in sections of retina with intact neuropile. After some initial training in microdissection, immunohistochemistry, confocal microscopy and pressure myogaphy, we challenged Tamara to cannulate mouse retinal arterioles with an average diameter of 15-20 μm. She proved herself equal to the task and very quickly was obtaining myogenic responses akin to those in rat arterioles (mean diameter 30-40 μm). We were then able to advance the project to our ultimate goal and gain data pointing towards a role for astrocytes in sensing transmural pressure using combined pressure myography and calcium confocal microscopy. This paves the way to investigations using tissue specific transgenic mice which will hopefully allow us to delineate the mechanisms involved and confirm the identity of the stretch sensor in retinal astrocytes. For Tamara the experience she has gained has already opened doors in terms of the work she has undertaken for her placement year in the University of Nevada. The studentship has inspired her to want to learn more about the microcirculation and to pursue a career in research. She reports, “The opportunity to get involved in high quality research and learn from leading researchers in the microvascular field allowed me to develop transferable skills and research techniques that have proved advantageous on my placement year and enabled me to become a better candidate for a PhD programme in the future.” Once again, thanks to the British Microcirculation Society for their support.
Dr Mary McGahon, Centre for Biomedical Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast.
Dr Patricia Kelly (Graduated December 2016), has been accepted as a post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School beginning on 1st May 2017 in the laboratory of Professor Brian Bacskai at Massachusetts General Hospital.
http://www.massgeneral.org/neurology/researcher_profiles/bacskai_brian.aspx
Patricia will continue her studies on Alzheimer’s disease by investigating the role of Astrocytes in the APP/PS-1 transgenic model of Alzheimer’s using a range of live imaging and advanced microscopy techniques. Patricia wrote a manuscript from a chapter of her thesis that was published in Microcirculation (2015) and another is currently being reviewed by the Journal “Angiogenesis”. Patricia has been active in the step up programme at UU for the last 4 years which introduces final year high school students from underprivileged backgrounds to the joy of scientific discovery and she is passionate about passing on her voluminous enthusiasm for science to the students who attend. In her social capacity, Patricia was instrumental in winning an award for the town of Park (Northern Ireland), which was designated a “dementia friendly town” in a gala ceremony in Belfast at the end of last year. Patricia also received a personal award for increasing community awareness of this debilitating disease both in Park itself and more widely in the ‘Derry area. I am immensely proud of Patricia’s achievements and am sure that we all wish her continued success in her scientific career in Boston, USA.