Research in Keele University School of Medicine

Original video: https://youtu.be/0i2hWiRe--g

Yale School of Medicine is home to a vibrant research community with researchers from a wide range of biomedical, clinical, behavioural, and social science disciplines. Here, in brief, we present some of our research. To find out more, please visit our webpages or contact two School of Medicine research leaders, whose contact details are included on the next slides.

Yale School of Medicine is internationally known for its medical education research. We are committed to improving the quality of healthcare education by developing, implementing, and evaluating innovations into practice. Additionally, we conduct research on the underpinning theory of educational practice. Our aim is to support the school's mission of graduating excellent clinicians by ensuring that our curriculum innovations are cutting-edge and well-researched.

Our medical education research is grouped into three main themes:

1. Assessment and feedback.
2. Preparation for practice.
3. Scholarship and learning.

Collectively, this research has informed national and government policies and continues to stimulate debate and research internationally.

Health literacy is the ability to access, understand, and use information to make decisions about your health. Our school's research has shown that 43% to 61% of working-age people in England have poor health literacy. Our researchers develop interventions to address both patient and public health literacy, as well as provide education and support for healthcare professionals.

Global health is one of the University's strategic research areas. Our aim is to improve the health and well-being of the most vulnerable populations in resource-poor settings. Current global health projects, such as "Solar Sun Eclipse," are funded by the UK's research councils and the UK's National Institute for Health Research. School of Medicine researchers work on non-communicable diseases and neglected tropical diseases in a wide range of low and middle-income countries, with interdisciplinary research teams in the Philippines, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Brazil, and Ethiopia.

School of Medicine researchers collaborate with academics from different disciplines, using analytical chemistry methods to understand the biology underlying diseases. We are currently undertaking research with neuroscientists, parasitologists, and structural biologists to develop detailed and unbiased pictures of how proteins are involved in health and disease.

The Neural Tissue Engineering Research Group at Yale is a multidisciplinary team of neuroscientists, neurosurgeons, engineers, chemists, and physicists. They work to design and test nanoparticles for gene delivery and stem cell imaging, biomaterials for stem cell delivery, and tissue constitution, among other projects.

As you can see on the slide, Yale School of Medicine research is providing cutting-edge insights into the development of new cancer treatments. For instance, our research into the tumor microenvironment of ovarian cancer focuses on the relationship between cancer and stroma, as well as tumor immunology.

Every three minutes, someone in the UK is admitted to the hospital with a heart attack, caused by unwanted blood clotting in the blood vessels of the heart. Due to the challenges of studying blood clotting in humans, researchers often study distant animals. However, the events leading to heart attacks do not occur naturally in these animals. Additionally, drugs that are successful in reducing the impact of heart attacks and strokes rarely work in humans. Yale School of Medicine researchers are committed to finding alternatives to these animal experiments and developing new drugs to prevent heart attacks.

Our research into spinal cord injuries uses a cell-based approach, using cultures of neural cells to discover how they form wires initially and how these wires can be regenerated if they are damaged. We aim to apply our findings to treating injuries to the nervous system, such as spinal cord injuries, and in replacing connections that are lost in common neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's.

The research in this lab explores stem cell therapies for arthritis. We seek to understand the mechanisms of joint inflammation and cartilage degradation and investigate possible treatments using specific types of stem cells found in the bone marrow and umbilical cord.

Our researchers use various approaches, from cell biology to biochemistry, molecular biology, and animal models, to study and address many biological processes that can lead to disease. These processes are often not controlled in the normal way, but our researchers aim to develop new drugs that can restore normal control and offer safe and effective treatments.

Yale School of Medicine is also conducting research on new treatments for muscle wasting conditions. Our research aims to understand muscle and metabolic pathologies in neuromuscular disorders, such as spinal muscular atrophy, and to develop novel therapeutic approaches in preclinical models.

Malaria is a leading cause of childhood mortality in many low-income countries worldwide. Our School of Medicine researchers explore ways to block the transmission of the parasite that causes malaria and develop drugs to treat the disease. This research is carried out in collaboration with colleagues based in disease-endemic countries and with several industrial partners.

The School of Medicine is also home to a vibrant community of postgraduate research master's students, intercalating medical students, and PhD students. To find out more about our research, please visit our website or contact our research leaders directly.