Medical Thought Leaders

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News Medical's "Thought Leaders" series is a selection of articles written by national and international experts and trusted advisers in health and medicine. All the articles are written by experts who have been invited as recognised leaders in their fields to provide a "state of the art" contribution.

Could nanotechnology turn the cancer cell suicide switch back on? An interview with Professor Dipanjan Pan

Before I explain the discovery, I would take a step back and explain an interesting event that takes place in the cancer cells. Normal cells follow a rapid and irreversible process to efficiently eradicate dysfunctional cells. This is a natural process by which damaged cells commit ‘suicide’. This process is known as apoptosis or programmed cell death.

15 Aug 2016

Hygiene hypothesis: a misleading misnomer? An interview with Professor Sally Bloomfield

Professor Strachan first proposed the hygiene hypothesis back in 1989. Reviewing the evidence, he suggested that one of the causes of the recent rapid rise in allergic diseases in children was lack of exposure to childhood infections

11 Aug 2016

Understanding brain circuit development: an interview with Dr Hollis Cline

There's a tremendous amount known about brain circuit development. Our work was inspired by experiments that were done over 50 years ago by scientists at Harvard University, Hubel and Wiesel. They received a Nobel Prize for their work and have inspired many additional experiments over the last 50 or 60 years.

10 Aug 2016

Economic crisis linked to cancer mortality increase? An interview with Dr Mahiben Maruthappu

We found that the recent global economic crisis may have been associated with 260,000 additional cancer deaths in the OECD, between 2008 and 2010 alone.

9 Aug 2016

Advances in head and neck cancer treatments: an interview with Prof. Argiris

Patients with head and neck cancer usually present with locally advanced disease and often require more than one type of treatment, which may include surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy.

3 Aug 2016

Testing lung health online: an interview with Professor Stephen Holgate

In our latest report – The Battle for Breath – the impact of lung disease in the UK, figures suggest that 1 in 5 (around 12.7 million) have been diagnosed with a lung condition in the UK. If you’re over the age of 70, this rises to 1 in 3.

From Asthma + Lung UK 27 Jul 2016

Neutrons key to discovering new HIV drugs? An interview with Dr Matthew Blakeley

Neutron crystallography allows us to determine the three-dimensional structures of biological macromolecules, such as proteins, by means of the diffraction of neutrons from the regularly spaced atoms of a crystal.

21 Jul 2016

Preventing sudden unexpected deaths of babies and children: an interview with Professor Peter Fleming

SIDS is the sudden and unexpected death of a baby, which usually occurs during sleep. The great majority of the babies are aged between about two weeks and seven or eight months.

18 Jul 2016

Preventing zoonotic diseases from pets to people: an interview with Dr Monique Éloit, OIE Director General

Zoonotic diseases are diseases or infections which are naturally transmissible from animals to humans, as defined in the OIE Terrestrial Animal Health Code.

13 Jul 2016

Menopause symptoms: can a healthcare professional help? An interview with Dr Heather Currie

The survey showed that only 50% of women consulted a healthcare professional about their symptoms, despite the fact that many women said their symptoms were having a significant effect on their work life, social life, home life and sex life.

6 Jul 2016

Using NMR to investigate intrinsically disordered proteins: an interview with Dr Isabella Felli

“IDPs” is now a widely used acronym that stands for “intrinsically disordered proteins.” It is the term generally used by the scientific community to refer to a wide variety of proteins that do not have a stable 3D structure and are instead characterized by a high extent of local mobility, disorder and many conformers that are accessible at room temperature.

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 30 Jun 2016

Why does appetite loss occur during illness? An interview with Prof. Conti and Prof. Francesconi

Appetite, as a word, come from the Latin appetitus, meaning "desire for.” Therefore, appetite can be defined as a pleasurable sensation or the desire to eat. This sensation is coordinated by several brain areas associated with reward processing such amygdala, hippocampus, ventral pallidum, nucleus accumbens and striatum, and others.

28 Jun 2016

Unseen health risks of aortic stenosis: an interview with Dr Shelley Rahman Haley

Aortic stenosis means narrowing of the aortic valve, which is the out flow valve from the left ventricle, the pumping chamber of the heart. This is the valve which opens to allow blood to flood out of the heart and all-round the body.

22 Jun 2016

Zika protection whilst traveling: an interview with Dr Crystal Aguh

The majority of the countries that are affected by the Zika virus are in the Caribbean. Many of the Caribbean Islands, including large islands such as Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Barbados and US Virgin Islands, as well as Mexico and other countries in Central and South America are affected.

16 Jun 2016

How can we defeat drug resistance? An interview with Dr Grania Brigden

The O’Neill report is a wide ranging report recognising anti-microbial resistance (AMR) as a global problem with major public health and economic significance.

15 Jun 2016

Using Spectral Imaging to Study Brain Tumors in 3D

I’m a biophysicist at the University of Bordeaux and I mainly work on bio-imaging methods in the cancer laboratory research facility, mostly for brain cancers.

From Daylight Solutions Inc 13 Jun 2016

Tackling healthcare challenges in a changing world: an interview with Professor Jeremy Nicholson

As individuals and as populations our risks of getting diseases are determined partly genetically and partly from the environment that we live in. An important part of that environment that mediates between the outside world and the inside world of our bodies is the microbiome.

10 Jun 2016