Month: June 2017

How patient involvement groups are influencing research

Congratulations to Mr Oliver Boughton (Clinical Research Fellow and Specialist Registrar in Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery) who won the prize for patient and public involvement in research at the Imperial Clinical Academic Trainees Annual Research Symposium earlier this month, after he co-founded the Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) Research Group in the MSk Lab with Matthew Ryan.

The PPI research group works with members of the public with pre-operative and post-operative orthopaedic conditions, to help shape the future of orthopaedic research into more effective methods of surgery and care. The first PPI group took place in July 2016 and since then there have been two further meetings.

Mr Oliver Boughton speaks further on the importance of involving patients with his research:

The involvement helps our lab by focussing our research on that which benefits patients, either directly through improving surgical techniques and devices, or indirectly by researching the science behind how bones behave under loading and how our joints move.

Patients have very much enjoyed being shown the lab and the research going on and have asked us great questions. This led to one patient asking an important question that has not been answered yet sufficiently in the literature and I am currently writing a systematic review to answer this question and am inviting the patient to be a co-author on the paper.

Find out more about the Patient Involvement Group on the MSk Lab website.

Positive Outcome for Prostate Cancer Research Collaboration

Further funding has been secured for the London Movember Centre of Excellence in Prostate Cancer Research; a joint research programme between Imperial (Prof Charlotte Bevan), The Institute for Cancer Research (Prof Johann de Bono) and UCL (Prof Mark Emberton).

The Centre is funded by a 5-year grant and following a mid-term review, earlier this year has now received confirmation of a successful outcome to fund the final 2 years for the current programme.

Congratulations on the impressive progress achieved through the Centre of Excellence to date, we look forward to continue working with you over the coming years. Dr Iain Frame, Director of Research, Prostate Cancer UK

You can find out more about the Movember Centre of Excellence and all the work taking place around prostate cancer in the Department of Surgery and Cancer.

Breast Cancer Research Wins Prize

Congratulations to Mr Edward St John (Clinical Research Fellow in Surgery), who won the British Journal of Surgery (BJS) Prize for best research presentation, after presenting his research entitled “Rapid Evaporative Ionisation Mass Spectrometry of Surgical Vapours Towards an Intelligent Knife for Precision Breast Surgery” at the annual Association of Breast Surgeons Conference 2017, held in Belfast.

Mr St John said he was honoured to have won this prestigious prize and is passionate about innovations in surgery and hopes his research will contribute to the field of intraoperative margin assessment techniques for breast cancer patients. Through his work as a breast surgeon, he strives for advances that might lead to better outcomes for breast cancer patients.

Find out more about Mr St John’s research through his latest publication in the leading breast cancer journal Breast Cancer Research.

Media highlight: Medical emergencies in space

Mr Matthieu Komorowski, Clinical Research Fellow in Intensive Care and PhD student in Surgery and Cancer, spoke at the Euroanaesthesia Annual Conference about the unusual and challenging problem of how to perform emergency medical procedures during space missions.

You can find out more about this fascinating research through the following media coverage: