Research
– Current research
The overall research theme of IMPACT is Complex Disease, providing the opportunity for students to undertake projects in diverse areas of biomedical science, and to allow supervisors from across all three universities to create innovative research ideas. Hence projects are focussed around the research strengths within each university, but also rely on the synergistic effect of the combined assets of Birmingham, Nottingham and Leicester. Current research projects range from those performing high resolution imaging of the brain (‘Learning to move in space and time: Multimodal imaging of the human cerebellum’) down to the investigation of single receptors (‘A new paradigm of GPCR signalling at intracellular sites in metabolic diseases’), the use of cutting-edge artificial intelligence-based approaches to better understand disease and predict its evolution in patients (‘Development of an algorithm predicting the progression of patients from undifferentiated arthritis to rheumatoid arthritis’) but also to aid novel drug discovery (‘Development of new computational and experimental methods for fragment based drug discovery by NMR’). In specific disease areas, students are investigating the role of gene variants in the control of heart function (‘Modulation of atrial function by common gene variants on chromosome 4q25’), trying to develop new methods to more safely control blood clotting (‘Optimisation of coagulation factor XIIa inhibitors as potential anticoagulants devoid of bleeding side effects’) and studying how altering epigenetics could be used to treat haematological malignancies (‘Defining the targets of HDAC inhibitors in diffuse large B cell lymphoma’).
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