Research

Inspire Grant for Medical School

The Keele School of Medicine has been awarded a two year INSPIRE grant (£10,000) - a funding programme co-ordinated by the Academy of Medical Sciences and supported by the Wellcome Trust.  The scheme constitutes part of the academy's portfolio of activities "aimed at nuturing the next generation of medical researchers".

INSPIRE aims to engage medical students with basic/clinical research and encourage students to consider research careers.  Coordinated by Dr Sam Hider (Primary Care Sciences), picutred, and Dr Divya Chari (Institute for Science and Technology in Medicine) together with two 5th year medical students Sohel Samad and Paul Nderitu, the grant will support a diverse range of activities including the setting up a student-led research network and promotion of research opportunities to students via a dedicated website and links to national student academic societies.  

The grant will also support a competitive summer studentship scheme, hosted by the research institutes of Primary Care and Science and Technology in Medicine, that have supported the scheme through matched funding, and an annual student Research Showcase featuring invited external speakers.

Through this initiative, the medical school aims to foster and evolve an innovative research strand within the medical curriculum.

Grant Charity Funding for Age-Related Hearing Loss Research

A cheque for £39,000 was presented to Dr David Furness, of ISTM, by Dr Sandy Stewart on behalf of the Freemason's Grand Charity last Friday.  The presentation took place in the Huxley Building despite the number of attendees being depleted because of the inclement weather.  The visitors were greeted by Dr Peter Thomas, deputy head of the School of Life Sciences.

The award is for Dr Furness to continue his work on age-related hearing loss and the use of stem cells to try to prevent it.  It follows a previous three-year award by the same charity through Deafness Research UK.

Medical Institute Awards for Staff and Students

Staff and students from Keele attended a prize giving event at North Staffordshire Medical Institute to formally receive grant and performance awards.

Staff awards went to Dr Bernadette Bartlam, Dr Linda Machin and Professor Julius Sim who are developing work identifying vulnerability in grief.  Their work touches on some of the most important issues in research being pursued with the Research Institutes for Social Sciences and Primary Care and Health Sciences.  People who are vulnerable in their grief (by whatever cause) are significant users of health and social care services.  The effective identification of such individuals and the appropriate targeting of interventions and resources are crucial, therefore, to both high quality care and cost efficent services.  This innovative research seeks to validate the Adult Attitude to Grief Scale, devised and developed by Dr Machin, as a measure providing evidence of such vulnerability.  The importance of this work was acknowledged in the award of a development grant by NSMI of £4,500.

Dr Sue Sherman and Professor Michael Murray, RI for Social Sciences, with colleagues from University Hospital of North Staffordshire, were awarded £9,703 to "identify and promote best practice in communicating to patients the results of cervical screening history reviews following diagnosis of cervical cancer".

Many women who devlop cervical cancer will have had cervical smears.  It is a national requirement that all women are offered the results of a complete review of their cervical screening history following a diagnosis of cervical cancer.  However, up to 20% of patients can have incorrectly reported screening tests, which may have prevented the earlier detection and treatment of their cervical cancer.  Despite the potential for these review meetings to cause distress or conversely to be an opportunity for transparency, this is the first research to be conducted exploring patient' experiences.

Two medical students were also presented with awards: 2011/12 Year 2 Medical Institute Prize for Best Performance in the Summative Assessments Eleanor Johns; 2011/12 Year 4 Medical Institute Prize for Best Performance in the Year 4 OSCE Assessments Laura Davis.

Royal Society Grant

Dr Aleksandar Radu of the Birchall Centre and EPSAM cluster, has been awarded Royal Society Research Grant of £8,990.

The grant will help development of exciting research on application of hybrid materials in chemical sensors.

The long term goal of the research is to develop "smart" sensors whose functionality can be modulated using external stimulitherby enabling users to adapt their sensors to the demands of analysis.

This project would examine the ability of ionic fluids to tune the functionality of ionophore-based sensors.  The focus will be on synthesis of tunable ionic liquids and elucidation of mechanisms under which they influence the response of these sensors.

Three new AHRC Awards for Keele Management School

Leverhulme Trust Research Award

A collaborative project between the Research Institute for Humanities at Keele, Southampton University and King's College London has secured a Leverhulme Turst reseaerch awrd of £247,692 to continue and complete a digital edition of the records of English administration in medieval Gascony.

In 1360, following Edward III's military victories, Aquitaine was transferred to the English crown in full sovereignty, and become a lordship akin to Ireland covering much of south-western France.  The project explores this important protoempire through innovative web-based presentation and analysis of the Gascon Rolls held in the National Archives in London.  Dr Simon Harris, currently at the Universite de Bordeaux 3, will join colleagues in History for the next two years to complete the critical editorial process of transcription and translation of the Latin texts.  These form the essential foundation of a digital edition combining text, maps, images and interpretation designed to reach an international audience, and reflect Keele's longstanding reputation in medieval palaeography.

Keele's Arthritis Research UK Centre of Excellence Status Renewed

Keele's Arthritis Research UK Centre of Excellence status has, following extensive external review, been renewed for a further five years with funding of £2.2million.

The five-year strategy for the Centre is to produce research that will underpin a shift in the way musculoskeletal disorders are managed in primary care management; away from a narrow focus on disease and reactive treatments (dealing with today's problems as presented by patients), to an increasing emphasis on:

• pro-active, positive approaches to seeking out patients needing more support for self-management, as well as those needing more input from doctors or other health professionals, and developing and testing new ways of organising primary care which better meets these needs and takes the physical, psychological and social needs of patients into account

• using our research into which physical, psychological and social factors predict what impact that musculoskeletal pain has on their every-day lives to define groups of patients with similar characteristics, and to match these patients with appropriate treatments, thus making sure that the right patients get the right treatment in a timely manner.

Professor Elaine Hay, Director, Arthritis Research UK Primary Care Centre at Keele, said "We will achieve this through three research programmes, addressing the two most common musculoskeletal problems (osteoarthritis and chronic musculoskeletal pain), and the two most common inflammatory diseases (gout and polymyalgia rheumatica) presenting to primary care.  Each programme brings together our clinical expertise in primary care with our strengths in observational research, clinical trials and qualitative research."

International award for Keele Researcher

Dr Matthew O'Brien, of the Lennard-Jones Laboratories and SMC cluster, has received a Thieme Chemistry Journal Award for 2013.

This international award recognises promising chemistry researchers, particularly in the field of synthetic organic chemistry, at an early stage in their academic career.  Awardees are chosen by the distinguished editorial boards of the Synthesis, Synlett and Synfacts journals.

Deafness Research UK Award

Dr Dave Furness, ISTM, has received a grant from the charity Deafness Research UK for approximately £15,000 to study the hair cells of the inner ear which detect sound.  The hair cells are highly sensitive to very quiet sounds and have a specialised region of tiny hairs at their tops that detect vibrations.  The method of detecting these vibrations involves and unknown protein ion channel.

The study uses Keele's high resolution electron microscopes to examine changes in mutant hair cells.  The work is in collaboration with Professor CM Hackney (visiting professor at the University of Sheffield) and Professor Robert Fettiplace, of the University of Wisconsin Madison.