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.

Compact MRI and multimodality: an interview with Bernard Siow, UCL

CABI is a preclinical imaging laboratory where we have about ten modalities. We started off with MRI and we have a 9.4T high-field system.

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 30 Mar 2015

Mitochondrial DNA movement: an interview with Professor Jiri Neuzil, Griffith University

According to our understanding, mitochondria undergo cycles of fusion-fission, i.e. they divide within the constraints of a cell and, upon cell division, each of the two daughter cells gets its ‘share’ of mitochondria.

29 Mar 2015

Multimodality at the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging: an interview with Professor Mark Lythgoe, UCL

Imaging techniques used to live in medical physics departments, where physicists worked on them, but now we're seeing biologists, cell biologists and developmental biologists looking at cellular processes and it's those advances that are really enabling imaging to move forward in a way that it hasn't previously been able to...

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 25 Mar 2015

Exercise and chronic fatigue syndrome: an interview with Professor Trudie Chalder

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is characterised primarily by fatigue but people often report muscle pain and sleep problems as well as concentration and memory problems. The symptoms affect people’s ability to carry out normal activities that healthy people take for granted. CFS can affect relationships, work and leisure activities.

24 Mar 2015

Using the butterfly effect to predict heart disease: an interview with Dr George and Dr Parthimos, Cardiff University

The emergence of the butterfly effect in many physical events reveals two fundamental laws that underpin all nonlinear systems. The first principle is known as determinism, which means that the evolution of an event can be followed accurately in the future, as long as we know its precise starting point and the rules of how a situation can change with time.

23 Mar 2015

Oxygen wristbands: an interview with Dr Gillian Lowrey

Oxygen is delivered with variable flows that administer different concentrations. National guidelines were published in 2009 that provide recommendations about prescribing the oxygen and titrating it to certain target ranges.

18 Mar 2015

Preventing falls in care homes: an interview with Professor Pip Logan

Older people living in care homes fall three times more frequently than individuals who still live in their own homes. There is often debate over the idea of people going into care homes as a solution to the fact they are falling at home but they can still fall in the care home.

16 Mar 2015

Weak spots in ebola’s defenses: an interview with Dr. Andrew Ward

There are hundreds of other antibodies against Ebola that we are in the process of imaging using the electron microscope. We are looking for new sites of vulnerability as well as subtle differences in the way the known sites are attacked. In particular we are looking for antibodies that the virus is unlikely to escape from when it mutates.

11 Mar 2015

Reducing premature deaths from noncommunicable diseases: an interview with Dr Shanthi Mendis, WHO

The main types of NCD are cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes. These have been identified as the principal conditions for three main reasons. One is that, collectively, they contribute the most to the total disease burden.

4 Mar 2015

Anxiety and déjà vu: an interview with Dr Christine Wells, Sheffield Hallam University

It’s thought that the neural basis of déjà vu is located in the temporal lobes, a region of the brain strongly associated with the storage and retrieval of memories. One source of support for this is evidence from individuals with temporal lobe epilepsy, some of whom experience déjà vu episodes as part of seizure-related auras...

3 Mar 2015

Epigenetics and women’s health research: an interview with Professor Steve Conlan, Swansea University

Our research into gynaecological oncology focuses around understanding mechanisms of how genes are regulated or how they become dysregulated in a disease; and also the effects that has on the surface of the endometrium and also the function of the ovaries...

From Chromatrap® - Porvair Sciences Ltd 24 Feb 2015

Neurodegenerative disease research using NMR: an interview with Christian Griesinger

Christian Griesinger, director of the NMR-based Structural Biology department at the Max-Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, talks about his research into neurodegenerative diseases using NMR to examine the dynamics of disordered proteins.

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 23 Feb 2015

Sugar intake and tooth decay: an interview with Professor Nigel Pitts

Globally, dental caries (the technical term for tooth decay) is the most prevalent non-communicable disease, affecting 80% of the global population. Healthy teeth support overall well-being, while dental caries can contribute to high levels of pain and anxiety, as well as leading to other medical problems.

18 Feb 2015

Applying NMR to biological problems: an interview with Professor Arthur Palmer

Our current focus is on areas in protein folding, molecular recognition by proteins and also enzyme catalysis. NMR spin relaxation is one of the very powerful techniques in NMR for studying conformational dynamics in proteins or chemical kinetic processes.

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 17 Feb 2015

Changes in moles and skin cancer: an interview with Dr Anjali Mahto, Consultant Dermatologist & British Skin Foundation Spokesperson

Melanoma is the 5th most common cancer in the UK and its incidence is continuing to increase since the mid-1970s. Cancer Research UK reports that its rates have increased more rapidly than any of the current ten most common cancers in males and females. Whilst some of this may be attributed to better surveillance and earlier detection, the real problem lies with sun-seeking behaviour and exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation.

16 Feb 2015

NMR and inhibiting HIV: an interview with Professor Michael Summers

Michael Summers is the Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In this interview, he tells us about his work investigating the structure of large RNAs using NMR spectroscopy.

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 9 Feb 2015

Electronic cigarettes and smoking cessation: an interview with Professor Peter Hajek

The electronic cigarette has been invented by Chinese pharmacist Hon Lik in 2003. The rise in electronic cigarettes (EC) popularity was initially a grass root phenomenon. EC are estimated to be at least 95% safer than cigarettes and they appeal to smokers who cannot or do not want to stop smoking, but who want to reduce the risks smoking poses to their health.

5 Feb 2015

Genomics of papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC): an interview with Professor Thomas J. Giordano

There are two types of thyroid cells and therefore there are two broad types of thyroid cancer. Medullary carcinoma is derived from parafollicular or C cells, whereas follicular cells give rise to several types of thyroid cancers.

4 Feb 2015

Using NMR to study influenza and TB: an interview with Dr. Tim Cross

In this interview, Tim Cross, Director of the NMR and MRI programs at the National High Magnetic Field Lab (NHMFL) in Tallahassee, Florida, talks about his research into protein structures in viruses and bacteria, and how the findings will affect medical research into disease prevention.

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 3 Feb 2015

Bronchial thermoplasty for severe asthma: an interview with Dr. Rob Niven

Internationally, severe asthma is defined as anybody who is on maximum therapy, which has no measurable side effects, but still have symptoms of persistent asthma. In the UK, that effectively means people who require oral steroids for their asthma two or more times a year.

27 Jan 2015