Research update by Professor Tim Elliott
As always, it has been a busy few months in the Faculty.
We are working to increase our capacity for translational research. A joint strategy board with the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust (UHSFT) has been established with senior executives on both sides working together to improve our ‘bench to bedside’ research.
Stronger links are being established with University colleagues in science and engineering, thanks to the Institute for Life Sciences (IfLS) which has made it easier for us to take a multidisciplinary approach to our strong research themes including neuroscience and immunology. One example of this is work we are doing with colleagues in the new IfLS Centre for Hybrid Biodevices which is exploring the use of technologies on the nanoscale to help with diagnostics and biological monitoring – the so-called ‘lab on a chip’.
Four new IfLS research fellows have been appointed to working areas important to medicine: neuroscience, biodevices for immunometry, imaging in the nano-domain and nanodrop technology. We also have joint PhD fellowships with IfLS as well as EPSRC ‘bridging the gap’ internships.
Work progresses on our translational molecular sciences hub, our ‘one stop shop’ for immunology, microbiology and genomics which is aimed at giving us a head start in the stratification of medicine (also known as ‘personalised’ or ‘precision’ medicine). This will help us understand which patients will respond to which medicines at which time and could result in major breakthroughs in the treatment of diseases such as asthma and cancer. We are also working on plans for our new Centre for Cancer Immunology, following the generous £10million gift announced earlier this year. We hope the bulldozers will move in early in 2014.
The Wessex Life Sciences Alliance is an exciting initiative linking Medicine, IfLS, the Salisbury NHS Trust and Health Protection Agency (HPA) at Porton Down and the Government research labs at DSTL and building on existing collaborations. Two PhD students have already been funded by the Alliance and will be researching vaccines and genetics.
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is going well with a year to go until the final deadline; we are in the middle of our third benchmarking exercise. The team has already collected close on 1,000 papers and prepared 25 impact case studies, and, with the aid of external assessors, graded and assessed them in time for a Faculty review of material in December.
We are looking at ways of interesting more undergraduates in a career in academic medicine by raising the profile of our research. We are involved with the Inspire programme run by the Academy of Medical Sciences and led at Southampton by Professor Anneke Lucassen.
http://www.acmedsci.ac.uk/p264.html
Finally, we can announce Southampton is embarking on another vital area of research. Professor Robert Read, a specialist in infectious diseases, has just joined us from Sheffield and will be building a team to target diseases such as meningitis, pneumonia and influenza and will complement our strengths in immunology and microbiology.