Festival of Research 2009

Thursday 23 July 2009

The 2009 Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences (FHMS) Festival of Research, held on Tuesday, 9th June in the Austin Pearce building was a great success, with approximately 250 attendees.

The day included highly entertaining and thought provoking guest speakers Professor Roger Corder and Professor Rod Flower FRS.

Each of the Faculty's 10 research themes presented a short "Hot Topic" presentation(listed on the right), highlighting cutting edge research within the Faculty.

Four young investigators were selected to present their research as 10 minute oral presentations; Miss Andrea Darling, Dr. Sapna Thakur, Dr. Rosemary Lim and Miss Shadi Bokaee. The External Advisory Board awarded the oral presentation prize to Dr Sapna Thakur.

Over 70 staff and students presented their work at the lunch time poster session. Four poster prizes were awarded to Mr Roderic Green, Dr Alexis Bailey, Dr Kath Hart and Miss Rehab Ahmed shafik Elkadri.

We would like to thank all our presenters, attendees and our sponsors.

For full details of presentations see the abstract booklet in PDF format.

Guest Speakers

Professor Roger Corder investigates the importance of improving health and cardiovascular wellbeing through diet. During the past five years he has studied the mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of regular red wine consumption, culminating in the publication of his popular book "The Red Wine Diet".

He is currently pursuing translational research on alternatives to red wine, such as grape seed extract, as these are more amenable to conducting clinical trials. This research is providing a wealth of new insights into how polyphenol-rich diets can modify vascular function. It has led to the concept that procyanidins (a particularly abundant type of polyphenol) trigger a response in the vascular endothelium that he has called the pseudo laminar shear stress response. This concept is based on evidence that procyanidins mimic the protective changes in the endothelium induced by the physical shear forces of blood flowing through blood vessels.

Professor Rod Flower has spent the majority of his scientific career working in the area of inflammation and anti-inflammatory drug mechanisms, in particular the mechanism of action of anti-inflammatory drugs including Cox inhibitors and especially the glucocorticoid steroids. His interest in this field began during his postgraduate days when he was responsible for some of the original work that demonstrated that the cyclo-oxygenase enzyme was the target of the aspirin like drugs, with Nobel prize winner Sir John Vane. Now a Fellow of the Royal Society, Professor Flower heads the department of Biochemical Pharmacology at the William Harvey Research Institute, which investigates the pharmacology and the biology of annexin A1, a protein discovered by Professor Flower whilst at the Wellcome Foundation. Annexin A1 is induced by glucocorticoids and has profound anti-inflammatory properties.

His research spans all aspects of Annexin 1 biology ranging from cell biology through to its role in human disease. Professor Flower will talk at the Festival about the impact of pharmacology on society and in particular "Lifestyle drugs", i.e. the non-disease related use of therapeutic medicines and social drugs such as alcohol.

 We are grateful to all our sponsors