The Neuroscience and Translational Medicine programme is hosted by the Centre for Neuroscience, Surgery and Trauma at the Blizard Institute, part of Queen Mary University of London's Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry.
The Centre's researchs focusses on themes such as neurotrauma, neurodegeneration, neuroimmunology, and neurogastroenterology. The Centre’s themes are closely linked with clinical academic units within Barts Health NHS Trust, with many of its staff actively involved in clinical research, phase 2 and 3 clinical trials. The research themes are designed to create partnerships between basic scientists and clinicians to encourage true translational research.
In February 2022, two new PhD students joined the Brain Tumour Research Centre of Excellence at the Blizard Institute to help in the mission to find a cure for paediatric brain cancers. The posts, generously funded by Brain Tumour Research's partner charities, The William Low Trust and The Children’s Brain Tumour Foundation, will enable new PhD students Thomas Willott and Alexandra Hadaway to investigate new treatments under the guidance of Professor Silvia Marino and her team at the Blizard. Their arrival will contribute to the development of a specialist hub focused on paediatric research at the Centre.
Professor Giovannoni’s research on the biological mechanisms by which compounds in cannabis control spasticity in multiple sclerosis patients led to changes in clinical guidelines in Wales and Ireland in 2014. As a consequence of disease-related nerve damage, people with multiple sclerosis develop issues associated with lack of co-ordination of neural signalling leading to many symptoms. This includes muscle stiffness (spasticity), which occurs in about 95 per cent of people who develop multiple sclerosis (2-3 million people worldwide). This also develops following brain and spinal cord injury, stroke and cerebral palsy. Our work demonstrated that the tetrahydrocannabinol in cannabis and the CB1 cannabinoid receptor in the body’s cannabinoid system act together to regulate overactive nerve stimulation. This was also the basis of numerous clinical trials. In both Wales and Ireland, the licensed product Sativex®, developed based on our research, is now approved for use. This led to a 2018 recommendation by the Chief Medical Officer for England to change the scheduling of cannabinoid drugs from Schedule 1 drugs which are defined as having little or no therapeutic benefit. In 2015, the Department of Transport changed their drug driving legislation to accommodate patients prescribed Sativex®. There is now conclusive evidence of medicinal benefit of cannabis-based products for certain medical conditions. Moving these drugs out of Schedule 1 would allow them to be prescribed under controlled conditions by registered practitioners for medical benefit.
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The ChariotMS trial, led by Professor Gavin Giovannoni, is the first multiple sclerosis (MS) clinical trial to focus only on people who can’t walk. It will test whether cladribine tablets (Mavenclad®), already licensed for highly active relapsing MS, can slow the rate of upper limb disability progression in people with advanced MS. To date, clinical trials for MS have not included people who are reliant on a wheelchair, and drugs have only been licensed if they improve walking ability. This means there are currently no disease modifying therapies (DMTs) available for the 35-40 per cent of people with MS who need significant help walking. If successful, ChariotMS could lead to the first MS drug licensed that protects upper limb function.
Professor Gavin Giovannoni and his team’s collaborative research within the Preventive Neurology Unit at the Wolfson Institute of Population Health is currently focusing on themes such as understanding the role of the Epstein Barr virus in contributing to MS risk, and examining strategies via which we can target it to ultimately prevent MS. It is also looking at improving our understanding of vitamin D levels in people with MS in the UK, to inform potential future vitamin D trials in MS in the UK; and also developing strategies to collect big MS datasets, to improve our understanding of adverse events associated with MS and MS treatments in a real-life UK population.
A new study led by Blizard researchers including Dr Angray Kang, Klaus Schmierer, Gavin Giovannoni and David Baker, has demonstrated the effectiveness of using a novel light technology to monitor the presence of anti-drug antibodies in the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS). The GloBody™ platform is a new tool which uses a light-producing enzyme, called nanoluciferase, to detect if anti-drug antibodies are present in a patient sample, which can cause allergies and stop the treatment from working. This is used to show which people are likely to respond to treatment and can predict which people are likely to fail treatment before it occurs, so that they can be switched to a different drug. This can prevent people from accumulating disability due to treatment failure. The researchers say that they have also applied the technology to COVID-19 for potential use in antibody testing to determine whether someone has previously been infected with the virus.
A recent paper by researchers from the Brain Tumour Research Centre of Excellence involving Blizard researchers such as Professors Silvia Marino and Denise Sheer, found that reactions in the microglia triggered by Glioblastoma multiforme (the most common malignant brain tumour in adulthood) hinders effective T‐cell infiltration, proliferation and immune reactivity, thereby contributing to tumour immune evasion and promoting tumour growth. A group of molecules, known as the mTOR pathway, play a crucial role in this. Targeting the mTOR pathway in microglia could be a way to turn these molecules back on to doing what they should be doing and halt tumour progression. The team at Queen Mary will now be further examining the mechanisms involved, looking at how to target the pathway that the GBM cells interfere with, in pre-clinical models, which if successful would pave the way for future clinical trials.