Round 2

PIs: Niki Karavitaki and Gabriela da Silva Xavier. 
Artist in Residence: Lucy Hutchinson

Acromegaly is a serious medical condition caused by a tumour in the brain secreting by too much growth hormone and leading to increased growth and damage to the body. As a result of acromegaly, patients also have a high risk of diabetes, heart attack and premature death. Getting treatment right is very important but the success of treatment is difficult to measure, meaning it is difficult to know if treatment is effective. 

In this project we will try to find better ways to assess treatment success by measuring changes in metabolites - substances produced when the body breaks down food, drugs or chemicals, or its own tissue.  This breakdown process is affected in people with acromegaly and our pilot study showed that there are differences in the metabolites in the blood of people with acromegaly in comparison with people without acromegaly.  We will compare changes in metabolites from people with acromegaly who do and do not respond to treatment, and from people without acromegaly, to identify metabolites that can be indicators of whether a patient is responding to treatment and provide clues on how acromegaly is damaging the body.  Thus, this novel research could affect real change in the treatment of acromegaly.

PI: Robert Neely. Co-Is: Anthony Samuel, Dave Smith, Fabian Spill, Sabrina Kombrink, Agi Haines, Paul Roberts
Artist in Residence: Agi Haines

The epigenome can be thought of as a series of switches in our cells. Each switch controls the amount of protein that can be produced in the cell. These proteins are important because they are the machines that manage a cell’s health and its response to disease, environment, ageing and so on. The epigenome is the control panel of the cell. The problem for us as scientists is that the switches on the control panel are invisible.

We have developed a novel technology that will shine a light on these switches in our cells. We can see these epigenomic modifications for the first time and now we need to understand how they are connected and the role they play in the behaviour of a cell. For example, in a cancer cell, we expect different switches to be set to ‘on’ than in a healthy cell; those switches may lead to the production of proteins that make cancer deadly.

We will use this project to unravel some of the unseen wiring between the switch and the cell type by developing new methods for image analysis. This will allow us to rapidly identify healthy and cancerous cells from the array of switches we see and will have application in cancer diagnosis and the development of new cancer therapies in the future.   

PI: Andrew Bagshaw. Co-Is: Caroline Richards, Samuel Johnson, Stefano Seri, Alice Winsor, Leandro Junges, Daniel Galvis
Artist in Residence: Karina Thompson

Epilepsy is a common brain disorder that causes repeated seizures. It can be very difficult to find out if a child has epilepsy, and when they have other conditions at the same time, this can be even harder. Two of the most common conditions that affect children with epilepsy are autism and ADHD. They also affect children's behaviour and brain function. When epilepsy, autism and ADHD are present, it can be very difficult to come to a clear diagnosis and to decide treatment.

In this work, we will use recordings of brain electrical activity from children with and without these conditions to develop computer models of their brains. These models will allow us to understand how each of these disorders affect the brain. In the future, this information will help doctors when they try to assess if a child has these conditions and the best way.

PI: Nicholas McCarthy. Co-Is: Sylvie Freeman, Kamila Silverio Fernandez, Meurig Gallagher
Artist in Residence: Charlotte Dunn

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a life-threatening blood cancer that affects around 3,200 people per year in the UK. Although treatments are improving, AML is still fatal in the majority of cases. 

Treatment for AML consists of chemotherapy, which kills the leukemia. The initial response to treatment is good in 60-80% of patients. However, it is often found that some cancer cells survive in the bone marrow, and these grow in number to cause the cancer to return (‘relapse’) months to years after treatment. 

Highly sensitive blood tests can detect these few surviving cancer cells, called ‘measurable residual disease’ (MRD). Patients with a positive MRD test are more likely to relapse. MRD testing can help doctors decide which treatment is best for patients, and helps test new treatments in clinical trials. 

Testing for AML is highly accurate for diagnosing this type of cancer. After treatment, experienced specialist doctors/scientists are required to analyse and interpret the test results, as it is harder to identify cancer cells at very low levels.  Our research will create software that can analyse MRD results in a consistent manner. This will improve the after-treatment MRD test accuracy and make it easier for the test to be carried out, allowing more people to use MRD testing to improve outcomes for AML patients.

PI: Gerard Cummins. Co-Is: Neel Sharma, Rachel Cooney, Venkata Lahari Balantrapu

Crohn's disease is a condition that causes inflammation of the digestive system (also known as the gut). Inflammation is the body's reaction to injury or irritation and can cause redness, swelling, and pain. Crohn's is a persistent and incurable condition that can affect the patient's quality of life at various points over their lifetime. The long waiting times for endoscopy result in a treatment delay.

This could be tackled through increased capsule endoscopy (CE) usage. This capsule has been in use for 20 years. It consists of a swallowable camera pill that sends data to an external wearable recorder. This technology allows endoscopy to be safely done outside the hospital. The capsules are safely passed out of the body and are flushed away. This technology reduces hospital pressure and potentially reduces the delay between the first signs of illness and confirmation of disease. However, each CE takes time to read and is tedious work, and mistakes can be made, with 6–20% of the signs of disease being missed. Computer programs have been used to help doctors detect gut disease using the more common tube-like endoscopes inserted down the throat or into the bottom.

However, these programs are not suited for CE since the camera is not as good, and the capsule motion cannot be stopped once swallowed, leading to some blurring. This project will use capsule video footage to see how well computer programs can detect Crohn's disease. Crohn's disease was chosen for this project as it affects the lives of 1 in every 650 people in the UK. However, there are few programs developed to aid the detection. 

A computer program that works with the capsules to detect Crohn's can help make it easy for doctors by flagging up specific capsule images for review. Furthermore, it reduces the risk of missed signs of disease and helps speed up the time between the first signs of illness and treatment to manage this disease. 

PI: Deena Gendoo. Co-Is: Andrew Beggs, Chris Lam

PDO’s are tumor samples grown outside the body in clinical conditions in order to create an ‘Avatar’ for testing potential treatments, before the patient undergoes potentially gruelling treatment. To efficiently use these PDO’s, they first need to be checked to make sure they accurately represent the condition of patient.

This project focuses on ensuring that the grown PDO sample matches the patient as closely as possible, in order to be able to develop future treatment. The project focuses on colorectal cancer, where many tumors do not readily respond to drug treatments, and therefore new approaches to understanding the tumor are necessary.

By using new methods of comparing patients and PDOs, this project will help quickly match PDOs to patients, exclude PDOs that don’t exhibit a match, and save time in selecting PDOs for future treatment