Oxford Researchers have identified a potential therapeutic target for inflammatory bowel diseases. The findings are of particular importance to the 40% of patients who don\u2019t respond to anti-TNF therapy, the current treatment option available. Professor Simon Travis co-led this study.
Although viral sequences are important in traditional taxonomy, information used for virus classification typically requires information on their biological properties, such as host range, pathogenicity and virion structure as well as genetic relationships. In his recent Consensus statement, Professor Peter Simmonds proposes sequence-only classification, enabling much of the viral diversity observed in metagenomic sequence datasets to be incorporated into official virus taxonomy.
The NDM Graduate Prize winners for 2016 are Emma Davenport, Symon Kariuki, Sarah McCuaig, Manuel Rivas and Joshua Tan. The winners were awarded a \u00a3500 prize. This year\u2019s winners have worked across many research areas including malaria vaccine work, behavioural studies and software development.
Professor Sir Peter Ratcliffe has won one of the most prestigious prizes in medicine. The Lasker Awards recognise contributions that have allowed major advances in the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of human disease. Professor Ratcliffe is to receive the prizes for his work understanding the mechanisms by which cells sense and signal hypoxia (low oxygen levels), an important component of many human diseases including cancer, heart disease, stroke, vascular disease, and anaemia.
Medical and health teaching and research at Oxford University has been ranked as the world's best for the sixth year running in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. The discipline-specific tables, released today, follow on from last week's announcement that Oxford has been ranked the top university in the world by the same publication - the first time a UK institution has been awarded the accolade.
Oxford becomes the first British university ever to occupy top position in the global table, which judges the performance of 980 universities across 79 countries. Oxford\u2019s top ranking reflects its all-round strength in contemporary research and teaching. Renowned as the oldest University in the English speaking world, modern Oxford is at the forefront of the full range of academic disciplines, including medical sciences, science and engineering, humanities and social sciences.
Mucosal Associated Invariant T-cells (MAIT cells) Australian researchers recently found that they had an important role in fighting bacterial infections. Now, the Oxford team, led by Professor Paul Klenerman, say that they also fight viruses. Their results are in the journal Nature Communications.
Dr Nicola Fawcett from the Modernising Medical Microbiology research group writes in the Oxford Mail about her research on the human microbiome, and how it might be affected by medications such as antibiotics.
Dr Najib Rahman has led a study that challenges current guidelines that advocate the avoidance of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and use of small chest tubes for a specific lung condition.
Talking to BBC Radio Oxford, Professor John Frater describes how HIV hides from the immune system, and how a new trial hopes to get the virus to reveal itself, so that the immune system can kill it. Interview begins approximately five minutes from the start of the programme.
Research led by Professor John Frater sheds new light on how the HIV virus remains undetected in some patients, even after treatment is stopped. These findings could potentially lead to the eventual eradiction of HIV-1.
Dr Nicola Fawcett from the Modernising Medical Microbiology research group has used created agar art from bacteria found in faeces for her entry to the American Society of Microbiology Agar Art Competition.
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) encompasses a group of inflammatory conditions such as Crohn\u2019s and ulcerative colitis, which currently affect about 1% of the population in the UK, Europe and North America. It is an illness that happens behind closed doors, but the impact for the patient and their family and friends is often harrowing. Prof Simon Travis, a leading consultant at the Nuffield Department of Medicine, is interviewed about IBD.
A study by researchers at the Nuffield Department of Medicine in The Lancet has tackled the controversial question of when to begin blood transfusions in cases where the blood loss is not life threatening.
7th April is World Health Day and marks the anniversary of the founding of the World Health Organization. This year\u2019s theme is food safety. NDM spoke to Professor Daniel Wilson about his research on tracking micro-organisms and how this can be applied to pathogens such as Campylobacter \u2013 a common cause of food poisoning.
Today\u2019s Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) results confirm the University of Oxford\u2019s world leading position in medical sciences research. Clinical Medicine ranked top for the overall quality of submissions along with Public Health Service, and Primary Care and Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience. The University of Oxford overall has the largest volume of world leading research and impact submitted to the REF exercise.
Leading Experimental Medicine and MRC Professor, Katja Simon, heads a team of scientists in developing a new method of boosting the ageing immune system using the naturally occurring chemical compound spermidine. Spermidine has potential to make vaccines more effective in the elderly, which in future could help protect this vulnerable population from seasonal flu and other infections.
2014 is the International Year of Crystallography and to celebrate this event NDM has produced a series of short films.\r\n\r\nRevolutionary Biology shows how the field of structural biology has developed over the past 100 years, Oxford\u2019s involvement in that development, and where we go from here. We hope that you enjoy watching how NDM and Oxford scientists have had a major role in revolutionizing drug discovery.
Public Health England (PHE), from the 1st January 2015 has appointed Experimental Medicine's Professor Derrick Crook as the their new Director of Microbiology.
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