Times Higher Education, 06/05/10. Professor Derrick Crook of the Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences has won a National Institute for Health Research grant for a research project looking at polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based diagnostics for gastrointestinal pathogens and direct sequence typing of Clostridium difficile.
Article on the danger from fake anti-malarial drugs notes that the head of the Wellcome Trust-Mahosot University Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Programme in Vietnam, Dr Paul Newton, recently stated that the cost of fake drugs is nearly impossible to estimate.
A UK research group dedicated to work on a rare genetic condition that turns muscle to bone will be established thanks to a donation to the University of Oxford. Dr Alex Bullock of the Structural Genomics Consortium will be supervising the new research projects along with Professor James Triffitt of the Botnar Research Centre.
We are pleased to announce that the Head of Department, Professor Peter Ratcliffe, has been awarded one of the Gairdner International Awards for his laboratory’s work on Oxygen Sensing, and that Professor Nick White received the new Gairdner Award for contributions to Global Health.
Two gene regions that influence a baby’s weight at birth have been identified by a large international team of researchers, including scientists from Oxford University. One of the genes is also associated with type 2 diabetes, which helps to explain why small babies have higher rates of diabetes in later life. Professor Mark McCarthy participated in the study.
Chunks of DNA that can frequently be duplicated or missing in our genomes are unlikely to play a major role in many common conditions, a study of the genetics of diseases including diabetes, heart disease and bipolar disorder has found. This type of genetic variation had been proposed as a possible source of some of the inherited risk of developing these conditions. Professor Peter Donnelly participated in the study.
Scientists in Oxford are looking for help in their research on how dementia affects language use. They hope in the future to be able to develop sensitive tests for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, and are asking for people to get in touch with examples of their writing, such as letters and diaries. Dr Celeste de Jager of the Oxford Project to Investigate Memory and Ageing (OPTIMA) at Oxford University is interviewed about the effect of Alzheimer's on language.
The results of the first study designed to find ways to slow or halt the development of diabetes and heart disease in those at risk of the conditions have been announced. Professor Rury Holman participated in the study.
Obesity and alcohol both increase the risk of liver disease, researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Glasgow show in two separate studies published in the British Medical Journal. Dr Bette Liu of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at Oxford University led the study.
‘It’s hard to think back and remember how we worked then. We were scrabbling around in the dark,’ says Professor Mark McCarthy of the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, recalling how research on the genetic causes of disease had to be carried out before the human genome was sequenced.
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