Issue 73

19 January 1999

Science insight

1999: Predictions from the bench

In part one of a new series, a selection of ICSM academics share their predictions of what will make an impact this year. In the next issue, engineers report

Interdisciplinary research was a strong theme running through many of the predictions.

Dr John Grange, NHLI Division, heralded a “rapid expansion into ‘holistic’ medicine” and predicted that once greater dialogue between medics, social scientists, anthropologists, philosophers, theologians and political scientists is underway, with the result that ‘medical scientism’ collapses, “Imperial will spearhead medicine with a humane face.”

We await the publication of his co-authored book on interdisciplinary perspectives on tuberculosis due in the spring to learn more.

A fusion of traditional epidemiology and molecular biology, forming the discipline of molecular epidemiology is what Dr Lars Jarup, primary care and population health sciences, nominates as the field to watch this year. What’s more at IC, he says, we have all the skills in place to take a headstart in a field which will be vital for public health in the future.

Watch the skies

Dr Olga Rutherford, Biomedical Sciences Division, may watch the progress of the international space station with interest.

With the increase in elderly members of the population, she predicts that the big areas will be the study of ageing, particularly preventing disability and muscle loss. Fresh insights will be gained from research into the zero-gravity environment of space.

Emotional control

Professor Steve Bloom’s research into peptide neurotransmitters in the Investigative Sciences Division is always newsworthy.

His team at Hammersmith look at the chemicals that control appetite and reproductive function in the brain. He says that the ability to chemically control basic human emotions and drives is becoming a practical proposition. “Can we now alter human drives? Can we make people more interested in one thing than another?”

Dr Glenda Gillies, Neurosciences and Psychological Medicine Division, thinks her Charing Cross-based group will contribute to revealing further whether a causal relationship between potential endocrine disrupting environmental chemicals and human disease or abnormalities exist. She predicts that early in the new millennium we will understand a great deal more about the biological mechanisms of early programming of health in later life, which will be accompanied by significant advances in endocrinology (the way our hormones work).

She says: “This could pave the way not only for a healthier lifestyle, but also for the development of new drugs for conditions as diverse as cardiovascular, reproductive and central nervous system diseases.”

Cannabis under investigation

Just last week Dr Anita Holdcroft, Surgery, Anaesthetics and Intensive Care Division, became one of the first two hospital doctors in the UK to agree to enrol patients in the first clinical trials of the medicinal uses of cannabis. She will investigate whether cannabis or cannabinoids can relieve post-operative pain in 300 patients. Exposure for this research should not be hard to come by. Never mind the daily press, one senior London scientist said recently: “Nature loves cannabinoids’’.

Why not take this opportunity to tell us about your own up and coming research? If you would like help with promoting your research, please contact Susie Renshaw or Tom Miller in the Press Office on 0171-594 6701/2 or email press.office@ic.ac.uk.