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.

Unlocking intrinsically disordered proteins: an interview with Peter Wright

I'm a professor in the Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology at The Scripps Research Institute. I have been performing NMR research on proteins for nearly 40 years.

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 11 Feb 2016

Duchenne muscular dystrophy: direct effect on muscle stem cells? An interview with Dr Rudnicki

For twenty years, it has been understood that dystrophin is expressed in differentiated muscle fibers where it is part of a protein complex that crosses the membrane and connects the extracellular matrix to the actin network inside the cell to provide structural integrity.

5 Feb 2016

Molecular imaging and radiochemistry: the importance of instrumentation. An interview with Professor Björn Wängler

Interview conducted with Professor Björn Wängler, Professor for Molecular Imaging and Radiochemistry from Heidelberg University.

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 4 Feb 2016

Alternative splicing: a new approach to drug development? An interview with Lucy Donaldson

RNA is becoming an interesting drug target as it takes possible intervention back one step to the synthesis of a target protein, instead of trying to block or inhibit a process.

1 Feb 2016

Using centrifugal elutriation and flow cytometry to answer biological questions: an interview with Peter Lopez

Flow Cytometry, the measurement of various cellular characteristics as they flow through a measuring apparatus, has so many applications.

From Beckman Coulter Life Sciences - Centrifugation 27 Jan 2016

Nutrition and breast cancer; starving triple negative breast cancer cells to death: an interview with Associate Professor Jeff Holst

While there are a range of reports that different foods and food groups can increase or decrease your risk of cancer, these associations are very difficult to scientifically verify.

27 Jan 2016

Using Single-Molecule Studies to Understand Cellular Processes: An Interview with Professor W. E. Moerner

Single fluorescent molecules provide a local nanometer-sized probe of complex systems. We can measure the motion of the single molecule, use them to achieve imaging on a scale down to 20 nanometers, or we can infer aspects of the behaviour of the object under study by the details of the light that is emitted.

From Pittcon 26 Jan 2016

Age-related macular degeneration: an interview with Cathy Yelf, Macular Society

Age-related macular degeneration is a condition of the macula, a tiny area of the retina at the back of the eye. Your macula is only about the size of the grain of rice, that’s about four millimeters across.

19 Jan 2016

Determining Ectopeptidase Activity: An Interview with Professor Stephen Weber, University of Pittsburgh

The scope of the activity of neuropeptides is remarkably broad. For example, neuropeptides are involved in pain control, mood/depression/eating disorders, social and emotional behaviour, body weight, drug abuse, stress, reproduction, motor control, memory, and in maintaining neuronal health when they are stressed.

From Pittcon 14 Jan 2016

Patient recommendations for rheumatoid arthritis treatment: an interview with Dr Nowell

The study, “When patients write the guidelines: Patient panel recommendations for the treatment of RA,” published in Arthritis Research & Care, demonstrated the feasibility of developing CPG recommendations based on a voting panel composed entirely of patients.

8 Jan 2016

Does cancer affect memory? An interview with Associate Professor Janette Vardy

The study evaluated cognitive function in patients with colorectal cancer. It characterized the incidence and severity of cognitive impairment in people with colorectal cancer (CRC) compared to healthy controls.

7 Jan 2016

Using stem cells to tackle CNS disorders: an interview with Dr Stefano Pluchino

My laboratory’s long standing interest is the study of the signaling capabilities of stem cells, both under homeostatic conditions

From Beckman Coulter Life Sciences - Flow Cytometry 5 Jan 2016

Flu vaccine: the facts. An interview with Dr Lisa Maragakis

There are different formulations of the flu vaccine but in general they all do the same thing, which is to stimulate our body's immune system to recognize and fight against the influenza virus.

21 Dec 2015

Wearable exoskeletons: what interactions are possible? An interview with Dr Juan C. Moreno

Wearable exoskeletons are coming to stay. Technological advancements in embedded computation and wearable mechatronics are enabling the production of new wearable exoskeletons that were not feasible a decade ago

17 Dec 2015

Can Nanostructured Microelectrodes be Used to Analyze Biomarkers? An Interview with Dr Shana Kelley

Electrochemical methods are appealing because simple and inexpensive instrumentation can be used to make highly sensitive measurements. However, it has been quite difficult to realize clinically-relevant levels of sensitivity using electrochemistry in highly complex, real-world samples.

From Pittcon 15 Dec 2015

Risk of dementia decreasing? An interview with Professor Carol Brayne, University of Cambridge

In this analysis we brought together the few European studies that have looked, within geographical areas, at the prevalence or incidence of dementia in the population aged 65 and over.

7 Dec 2015

Bacteriophage therapy: an alternative to antibiotics? An interview Professor Clokie

A phage is a virus that infects a bacterium. People often get very confused about what the difference is between a virus and a bacterium. A virus, like a bacterium, is also a microorganism, but unlike bacteria, it needs to have a host to be able to replicate and propagate.

2 Dec 2015

Could statins treat muscular dystrophy? An interview with Dr. Nick Whitehead and Dr Stan Froehner

In addition to their well established cholesterol lowering benefits, statins also have potent anti-inflammatory, anti-fibrotic and antioxidant effects, which continue to be identified in a wide range of diseases.

30 Nov 2015

Living with lung cancer: an interview with Aoife McNamara

Understanding how lung cancer affects patients from a social perspective is vital. People living with lung cancer, lung cancer survivors and carers are impacted by lung cancer in different ways.

18 Nov 2015

Combatting viral and bacterial lung infections with volatile anesthetics: an interview with Dr Chakravarthy

Inhaled anesthetics are fairly common all over the world for minor and extensive surgical procedures in patients of all age groups. In the olden days when anesthesia was first developed, ether was the first inhaled anesthetic. That has been replaced, with the more recent discoveries of sevoflurane, isoflurane, and desflurane.

9 Nov 2015