University of Birmingham College of Medical and Dental Sciences Fellows Symposium 2015 Leonard Deacon Lecture Theatre, Medical School Thursday 9 July 2015 08.30 Coffee 08.45 Welcome - Professor Paul Moss Session 1 Chair: Professor Jane McKeating 09.00 Introduction by Chair 09.05 Dr Hareth Al-Janabi, Birmingham Fellow, Health Economics 09.25 Dr Mathew Coleman, MRC New Investigator, Cancer 09.45 Dr Michele Buckner, AXA Fellow, Bacteriology – Antimicrobial Resistance 10.05 Dr Yemisi Takwoingi, NIHR Fellow, Biostatistics - Test Evaluation 10.25 Dr Anne Fletcher, Birmingham Fellow, Immunology 10.45 Refreshment break Session 2 Chair: Professor Tracy Roberts 11.10 Introduction by Chair 11.15 Dr Raoul Reulen, NIHR Fellow, Epidemiology - Cancer Survivorship 11.35 Dr Rowan Hardy, ARUK Fellow, Endocrinology and Inflammation 11.55 Dr Sovan Sarkar, Birmingham Fellow, Autophagy and Stem Cells 12.15 Dr David Withers, Wellcome Research Career Development Fellow, Immunology 12.45 Lunch and opportunity for networking Session 3 Chair: Professor David Adams 14.00 Introduction by Chair 14.05 Dr Joyce Yeung, NIHR Clinician Scientist in Anaesthesia 14.25 Dr Oliver Goodyear, BBSRC Enterprise Fellow, immunology/tumour immunology 14.45 Dr Zania Stamataki, Royal Society DH, Viral Immunology and Liver 15.05 Dr Camela de Santo, CRUK New Investigator, Cancer 15.25 Professor Yotis Senis, BHF Senior Fellow, Cardiovascular Sciences 15.45 Closing summary – Professor Jane McKeating 16.05 Drinks reception Fellows Presenting Session 1 09.05 Dr Hareth Al-Janabi, Birmingham Fellow, Health Economics, School of Health and Population Sciences Contact details: Email [email protected], Telephone 0121 415 8483 Measuring the wider costs and benefits of treatments to patients’ family carers Hareth first worked as an economist at the Department of Health and the Treasury. In 2005, he started a PhD at the University of Bristol, supervised by Professor Jo Coast (now at Birmingham) and caught the research bug! He completed the PhD and moved to the University of Birmingham in 2008. Over the last 7 years he has been involved in research to develop techniques to measure the wider benefits of healthcare interventions for economic evaluation. He was awarded a personal fellowship by the MRC (2011) and a Birmingham Fellowship (2012) to develop his research programme on informal care. He is currently working on studies in a number of areas including childhood illness, dementia, end of life care, and lung disease. 09.25 Dr Mathew Coleman, MRC New Investigator, School of Cancer Sciences Contact details: Email [email protected], Telephone 0121 414 4484 OH, the places you'll go! Protein hydroxylation and its role in physiology and disease Mat’s research focuses on exploring the role of hydroxylation in fundamental cellular processes and disease, including protein synthesis and cancer. In 2009 a Career Development Fellowship funded by the OAK foundation allowed Mat to establish his group working on cancer-associated protein hydroxylases. Together with Professor Christopher Schofield (Chemistry department, Oxford University) he demonstrated for the first time that the ribosome is a novel target of protein hydroxylases. Subsequent work focussed on identifying other hydroxylases that regulate protein synthesis, and the roles these and related enzymes play in cancer. This work resulted in an MRC New Investigator Award and a GSK/BBSRC industrial CASE PhD scholarship. Mat’s work is continuing to explore the role of protein hydroxylation in tumour cell biology. 09.45 Dr Michelle Buckner, AXA Research Fund Fellowship, Antibiotic Resistance, Institute of Microbiology and Infection and School of Immunity and Infection Contact details: Email: [email protected], Telephone 0121 415 8693 Twitter: @mmcbuckner Mitigating the risks of plasmid mediated antibiotic resistance Michelle is a microbiologist whose research interest’s lie in how bacteria become resistant to antimicrobials, and what can be done to make them sensitive to existing antimicrobials. Michelle completed her PhD in Prof. Finlay’s laboratory at the University of British Columbia. She studied the interaction of the bacterial pathogen Salmonella Typhimurium with the host. She explored the role of the SPI2 encoded type three secretion system in virulence in mouse models of typhoid fever, macrophages, and epithelial cells and the interaction between bacterial infection and host metabolism, specifically the role of prostaglandin hormones on bacterial pathogenesis. Michelle came to Birmingham in 2013 as a researcher with Laura Piddock. Initially she worked on bacterial efflux pumps and their role in virulence. In Jan 2015 she started her AXA Fellowship studying antibiotic resistance plasmids. 10.05 Dr Yemisi Takwoingi, NIHR Doctoral Fellowship Public Health, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School Health and Population Sciences Contact details: Email [email protected], Telephone 0121 414 7833 How reliable is the evidence for selecting diagnostic tests for patient care? Yemisi’s main interest is in methodology for systematic reviews of diagnostic test accuracy studies, and the design and conduct of primary studies of medical tests. Following a career break from veterinary medicine that led to an MSc in Information Technology, Yemisi joined the University of Birmingham in 2001 as an analyst programmer in the Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit. She later worked in the Unit as a statistical programmer and statistician after completing a Diploma in Statistics (Open University, 2005) and an MSc in Medical Statistics (University of Leicester, 2007). In 2008, she moved to the Test Evaluation Research Group based in Heath and Population Sciences. In 2011 she was awarded an NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowship to undertake a PhD in meta-analytic methods for summarising and comparing diagnostic test accuracy. In addition to her methodology research, Yemisi is statistical lead/study statistician on collaborations undertaking primary and secondary research of tests in a variety of healthcare topics funded by the NIHR and other funders. She is also interested in developing user-friendly programs to make statistical methods used in test evaluation accessible to non-statisticians. 10.25 Dr Anne Fletcher, Birmingham Fellow Immunology, School of Immunity and Infection Contact details: Email [email protected] Lymph node stromal cells: nurturing the adaptive immune response After completing her PhD in Immunology at Monash, Anne spent a few years at Harvard Medical School / Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Boston, USA before taking up her position last year as a Birmingham Fellow in Immunology. Anne’s research interests are focussed on examining how structural cells of the lymph node foster the initiation and healthy regulation of immune responses. She uses a range of cutting-edge cellular and molecular techniques to examine immunological interactions between stromal cells and leukocytes, focussing on interactions between lymph node fibroblastic reticular cells (FRCs) and T cells, in both healthy and disease states. Session 2 11.15 Dr Raoul Reulen Senior Lecturer & NIHR Fellow, Public Health, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Health and Population Sciences Contact details: Email [email protected], Telephone 0121 414 4946 Adverse health outcomes among five year survivors of a cancer diagnosed under age 40 years Raoul completed an MSc in Epidemiology and one in Health Sciences from Maastricht University, undertaking his MSc dissertation at the University of Leuven, Belgium as an Erasmus Exchange student. In 2006 he was awarded a Cancer Research UK Graduate Training Fellowship to support his PhD studies in the Centre for Childhood Cancer Survivor Studies Group at Birmingham looking at the long term effects of treatment of a cohort of 35,000 cancer survivors in Britain. He was awarded an NIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship and is currently involved in setting up the Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Survivor Study (TYA-CSS), a large-scale cohort study of 235,000 individuals in Britain diagnosed between the ages of 15 to 39 years. Raoul is also involved in several EU PF7 survivorship studies and works closely with groups in the US looking at survivorship. 11.35 Dr Rowan Hardy, ARUK Career Development Fellow, School of Experimental Medicine & School of Immunity and Infection Contact details: Email [email protected] The Endocrinology of Inflammatory disease Rowan completed his BMedSci degree at the University of Birmingham, specialising in Cellular and Molecular Biology, before undertaking a PhD in Medical Sciences exploring the role of steroid metabolism in inflammatory disease. He has since held a Wellcome Trust VIP award and ARUK Travelling Fellowship where he focused on steroid metabolism in murine models of inflammatory disease at the University of Sydney. He is now an ARUK Career Development Fellow where his primary focus is exploring the roles of pre-receptor glucocorticoid metabolism in mediating detrimental features of chronic inflammatory disease such as muscle wasting, cartilage erosion and bone loss. 11.55 Dr Sovan Sarkar, Birmingham Fellow, School of Immunity and Infection Contact details: Email [email protected], Telephone 0121 414 6669 Regulation and therapeutic application of autophagy in human diseases. Sovan is a Birmingham Fellow, and holds the distinction of Former Fellow at Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge. Sovan graduated from University of Cambridge with Gates Cambridge Scholarship followed by Post-Doctoral positions at University of