̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Claudia Langenberg

Cambridge scientists elected as Members of the European Molecular Biology Organisation

jg533 — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 12:00:56 +0000

Five Cambridge researchers join the community of over 2,100 leading life scientists today as the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) announces its newest Members in its 60th anniversary year.

̽��ֱ�� academics ranked among best in the world

hcf38 — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 10:57:57 +0000

̽��ֱ��Research.com Best Female Scientists in the World 2023 rankings are based on an analysis of more than 166,000 profiles of scientists across the globe. Position in the ranking is according to a scientist’s total ‘H-index’ - rate of the publications made within a given area of research as well as awards and recognitions. Only the top 1000 scholars with the highest H-index are featured in the ranking.

Kay-Tee Khaw, an Emeritus Professor in Gerontology and a Gonville & Caius Fellow, is placed fifth worldwide and tops the list for Europe. Professor Khaw, who was named a CBE in 2003 for Services to Medicine, published a study on how modest differences in lifestyle are associated with better life expectancy which informed the UK Government’s ‘Small changes, big difference’ campaign in 2006.

Also high in the rankings is Barbara Sahakian, Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology in the Department of Psychiatry and a Fellow of Clare Hall, who is placed sixth in the UK. Professor Sahakian’s recent research includes a study showing the benefits to mental health and cognitive performance of reading for pleasure at an early age, and seven healthy lifestyle factors that reduce the risk of depression.

Joining Professor Khaw and Professor Sahakian in the top 10 in the UK is Carol Brayne, Professor of Public Health Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry and Fellow of Darwin. Awarded a CBE in 2017 for Services to Public Health Medicine, Professor Brayne has pioneered the study of dementia in populations.

Nine other ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge scientists also make the rankings:

Professor Gillian Murphy (Department of Oncology), an international leader in the field of metalloproteinases, who has defined their roles in arthritis and cancer.

Professor Claudia Langenberg (MRC Epidemiology Unit), a public health specialist combining her expertise with research focused on molecular epidemiology.

Professor Nita Forouhi (MRC Epidemiology Unit), a physician scientist, MRC Investigator and Programme Leader in Nutritional Epidemiology, whose research on the link between diet, nutrition and chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes has informed health policy.

Professor Alison Dunning (Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology, Department of Oncology), a genetic epidemiologist working on the risk of breast and other hormonal cancers.

Professor Karalyn Patterson (MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge Centre for Frontotemporal Dementia and Related Disorders), a Fellow of Darwin College, who specialises in what we can learn about the organisation and neural representation of language and memory from the study of neurological patients suffering from the onset of brain disease or damage in adulthood.

Professor Dame Clare Grey (Department of Chemistry), a materials chemist whose work has paved the way for less expensive, longer-lasting batteries and helped improve storage systems for renewable energy, she is Chief Scientist and co-founder of Nyobolt, a company that is developing ultrafast-charging batteries for electric vehicles.

Professor Sharon Peacock (Department of Medicine), who has built her scientific expertise around pathogen genomics, antimicrobial resistance, and a range of tropical diseases, was the founding director of the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium which informed the COVID-19 pandemic response.

Professor Maria Grazia Spillantini (Department of Clinical Neurosciences and Fellow of Clare Hall) has been researching the cause of dementia for many years and was the first to identify the specific protein deposit found in Parkinson’s disease.

Professor Dame Theresa Marteau (Department of Public Health and Primary Care and Honorary Fellow of Christ’s College), a behavioural scientist, focuses on the development and evaluation of interventions to change behaviour (principally food, tobacco and alcohol consumption) to improve population health and reduce health inequalities, with a particular focus on targeting non-conscious processes.

Speaking on publication of this year’s rankings, Imed Bouchrika, Co-Founder of Research.com and Chief Data Scientist, said: “ ̽��ֱ��purpose of this online ranking of the world's leading female scientists is to recognize the efforts of every female scientist who has made the courageous decision to pursue opportunities despite barriers.

“Their unwavering determination in the face of difficulties serves as a source of motivation for all young women and girls who pursue careers in science.”

Twelve academics from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have been ranked among the top female scientists in the world - with one claiming the top spot for Europe.

Gonville & Caius College

Professor Kay-Tee Khaw who has been named as the top female scientist in Europe by Research.com

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Study highlights potential for ‘liquid health check’ to predict disease risk

cjb250 — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 16:00:36 +0000

Preventative medicine programmes such as the UK National Health Service’s Health Check and Healthier You programmes are aimed at improving our health and reducing our risk of developing diseases. While such strategies are inexpensive, cost effective and scalable, they could be made more effective using personalised information about an individual’s health and disease risk.

̽��ֱ��rise and application of ‘big data’ in healthcare, assessing and analysing detailed, large-scale datasets makes it increasingly feasible to make predictions about health and disease outcomes and enable stratified approaches to prevention and clinical management.

Now, an international team of researchers from the UK and USA, working with biotech company SomaLogic, has shown that large-scale measurement of proteins in a single blood test can provide important information about our health and can help to predict a range of different diseases and risk factors.

Our bodies contain around 30,000 different proteins, which are coded for by our DNA and regulate biological processes. Some of these proteins enter the blood stream by purposeful secretion to orchestrate biological processes in health or in disease, for example hormones, cytokines and growth factors. Others enter the blood through leakage from cell damage and cell death. Both secreted and leaked proteins can inform health status and disease risk.

In a proof-of-concept study based on five observational cohorts in almost 17,000 participants, researchers scanned 5,000 proteins in a plasma sample taken from each participant. Plasma is the single largest component of blood and is the clear liquid that remains after the removal of red and white blood cells and platelets. ̽��ֱ��study resulted in around 85 million protein targets being measured.

̽��ֱ��technique involves using fragments of DNA known as aptamers that bind to the target protein. In general, only specific fragments will bind to particular proteins – in the same way that only a specific key will fit in a particular lock. Using existing genetic sequencing technology, the researchers can then search for the aptamers and determine which proteins are present and in what concentrations.

̽��ֱ��researchers analysed the results using statistical methods and machine learning techniques to develop predictive models – for example, that an individual whose blood contains a certain pattern of proteins is at increased risk of developing diabetes. ̽��ֱ��models covered a number of health states, including levels of liver fat, kidney function and visceral fat, alcohol consumption, physical activity and smoking behaviour, and for risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

̽��ֱ��accuracy of the models varied, with some showing high predictive powers, such as for percentage body fat, while others had only modest prognostic power, such as for cardiovascular risk. ̽��ֱ��researchers report that their protein-based models were all either better predictors than models based on traditional risk factors or would constitute more convenient and less expensive alternatives to traditional testing.

Many of the proteins are linked to a number of health states or conditions; for example, leptin, which modulates appetite and metabolism, was informative for predictive models of percentage body fat, visceral fat, physical activity and fitness.

One difference between genome sequencing and so-called ‘proteomics’ – studying an individual’s proteins in depth – is that whereas the genome is fixed, the proteome changes over time. It might change as an individual becomes more obese, less physically active or smokes, for example, so proteins will be able to track changes in an individual's health status over a lifetime.

“Proteins circulating in our blood are a manifestation of our genetic make-up as well as many other factors, such as behaviours or the presence of disease, even if not yet diagnosed,” said Dr Claudia Langenberg, from the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. “This is one of the reasons why proteins are such good indicators of our current and future health state and have the potential to improve clinical prediction across different and diverse diseases.”

“It’s remarkable that plasma protein patterns alone can faithfully represent such a wide variety of common and important health issues, and we think that this is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr Stephen Williams, Chief Medical Officer of SomaLogic, who led the study. “We have more than a hundred tests in our SomaSignal pipeline and believe that large-scale protein scanning has the potential to become a sole information source for individualised health assessments.”

While this study shows a proof-of-principle, the researchers say that as technology improves and becomes more affordable, it is feasible that a comprehensive health evaluation using a battery of protein models derived from a single blood sample could be offered as routine by health services.

“This proof of concept study demonstrates a new paradigm that measurement of blood proteins can accurately deliver health information that spans across numerous medical specialties and that should be actionable for patients and their healthcare providers,” said Peter Ganz, MD, co-leader of this study and the Maurice Eliaser Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the UCSF and Director of the Center of Excellence in Vascular Research at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. “I expect that in the future we will look back at this Nature Medicine proteomic study as a critical milestone in personalising and thus improving the care of our patients.”

Reference
Williams, SA et al. Plasma protein patterns as comprehensive indicators of health; Nat Med; 2 Dec 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41591-019-0665-2

Competing interests
̽��ֱ��research was a collaboration with SomaLogic Inc, which has a commercial interest in the results. Several co-authors were or are employees of SomaLogic. ̽��ֱ��company has provided funding to the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. Dr Peter Ganz is a member of the SomaLogic Medical Advisory board, for which he receives no remuneration of any kind.

Funding
̽��ֱ��research was supported by the UK Medical Research Council, US National Institutes on Aging, British Heart Foundation, National Institute for Health Research, the Norwegian Ministry of Health, Norwegian ̽��ֱ�� of Science and Technology and Norwegian Research Council, Central Norway Regional Health Authority, Nord-Trondelag County Council, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. SomaScan assays and the Covance study were funded by SomaLogic, Inc.

Proteins in our blood could in future help provide a comprehensive ‘liquid health check’, assessing our health and predicting the likelihood that we will we will develop a range of diseases, according to research published today in Nature Medicine.

Proteins circulating in our blood are a manifestation of our genetic make-up as well as many other factors, such as behaviours or the presence of disease, even if not yet diagnosed

Claudia Langenberg

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Blood plasma

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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