Winter 2004 Newsletter

Legacy provides further funding at St Mary's Hospital, Manchester

Behavioural Neurology

Back row from left to right - Mr Adam Donne (Surgeon and MD Student) Dr Xiaotong He (Post Doctoral Scientist), Dr Nader Mansoursamei (PhD Student) Miss Rebecca Howard (PhD Student), Miss Hayley Sloan (PhD Student), Dr Chenggang Li (Post Doctoral Scientist) Front Row from left to right - Dr Lynne Hampson (Lecturer), Dr Ian Hampson (Senior Lecturer), Mr Anthony Oliver (PhD Student)

Legacy provides further funding at St Mary's Hospital, Manchester

We are grateful to the Humane Research Trust for continuing to support our work here at St Mary’s. The Trust has now provided funds that will be used to support the appointment of a post doctoral scientist that will continue until October 2009.

In recognition of a major bequest to the Trust the post will be called the Monica Lumsden Fellowship and the work will aim to identify the molecular targets of human tumour viruses. It is now realised that many different types of human cancer are caused by infection with viruses. The best known example is probably human papilloma virus and cervical cancer although other viruses have also been linked to the development of human malignant disease. For example; Hepatitis B & C virus - liver cancer; human T-cell leukaemia virus – leukaemia; Epstein Barr Virus - nasopharyngeal carcinoma; and most surprising is the link between SV40 (a monkey virus) and malignant mesothelioma (asbestosis). SV40 gained entry to the human population via early batches of polio vaccine. In the last two years we have assembled a large collection of cancer causing proteins from these, and other viruses, with a proven link to human cancer. Although these viruses all cause different types of cancer they often target the same proteins and pathways in human cells. We intend to use these viruses as a means of identifying which human proteins and their pathways are targeted in common by different tumour viruses since it is these that will most likely provide increased understanding of the molecular processes that lead to the development of cancer. Interestingly, the same proteins are also often functionally altered by other means in cancers which are not caused by viruses. We will then go on to analyse the function of these proteins using a variety of cultured normal and malignant human cells The outcome of this work should be the identification of human proteins that will provide the best targets for the development of therapies with the potential to both treat and prevent cancer.

Drs Ian and Lynne Hampson,

University of Manchester

Gynaecological Oncology Laboratory,

St Mary’s Hospital,

Hathersage Road,

Manchester M13 OJH    

Behavioural Neurology

Professor John Hodges is Professor of Behavioural Neurology at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge.

Support from The Humane Research Trust has been vital in furthering the knowledge of the neuropathology of dementing illnesses, a vital step towards future cures for these devastating diseases.  Prof. Hodges’ research focuses on early onset dementia, that is to say dementia in patients under the age of 65.  The main causes of dementia in this age group are Alzheimer’s disease and the frontotemporal dementias.  Over the past decade the team has accrued 150 brains from patients studied in life in their clinics.  All of these patients have undergone extensive testing of memory, language and other cognitive abilities as well as brain imaging.  The funding of Sister Angela O’Sullivan by The Humane Research Trust has been vital to this research enterprise.  Sister O’Sullivan provides support and counselling during life for the patients attending the clinics and at an appropriate time obtains a ‘declaration of intent’ for brain tissue donation post mortem.  She maintains links with the families during all stages of the patient’s illness.  Because of these efforts their success in obtaining declarations of intent is extremely high.

After death, brain tissue is transferred to the Cambridge Brain Bank Laboratory.  By the use of state-of-the-art staining techniques Prof. Hodge’s team is able to classify the type of dementia and study the distribution of changes within the brain.  They have forged a number of productive collaborations with brain scientists in Cambridge, UK and around the world, which have resulted in numerous scientific publications.  In addition to projects centred around Cambridge, they have been able to supply brain tissue to researchers elsewhere in the UK who are undertaking ethically approved dementia research thus helping broad research initiatives into dementia.                   

Collaborations include Dr. John Xuereb of Cambridge (Alzheimer’s Disease), Prof. Glenda Halliday of Sydney, Australia (Frontotemporal dementia), Dr. Maria Spillantini of Cambridge (Molecular neuropathology and genetic studies), Prof. Carol Brayne of Cambridge (dementia in the community), and many more.