School responds to importance of genomics

The increasing awareness of the importance of genetic differences between individual patients poses a series of challenges to modern healthcare and related education. Two of our teaching staff, Lynn McCallum and Elaine Green, went to the recent meeting of the Westminster Health Forum entitled Future of Personalised and Genomic Medicine held on the 14th of December 2017 in London.

Over the past two years the School has moved to meet these challenges, specifically as laid out in the QAA's 2015 Benchmark statement for Biomedical Sciences. This has resulted in the inclusion of genomic and bioinformatics within undergraduate taught programmes to ensure graduates are skilled and prepared to deal with this massive change of practice within their career. The MSc in Biomedical Science has a core taught module on Genomics and Proteomics to provide a comprehensive overview of basic genomics and proteomics, understanding the latest experimental techniques and interpretation of data. Bioinformatics is also available as an optional taught module.

Lecturer wins national teaching award

Congratulations to Andy Foey, our Associate Professor in Immunology, who has just won the inaugural Teaching Excellence Award of the British Society for Immunology.

You can read more about this on the university website and there will be an interview with Andy in the next edition of Immunology News, due out February 2018.

Children in Need- raffle winner

We have just worked out that we raised £186.46 and have a photograph of the raffle winner: Reuben (Tina Hodge’s Grandson), who was delighted to have Pudsey come to live with him. :-)

Thanks again to everyone involved.

Student insights

We recently have been improving the School website to show more about what students actually do on the courses. This includes more examples of students' experiences, e.g. on the Nutrition, Exercise and Health site which you can access here.

Healthy Cities

One of our lecturers, Michael Jarvis, recently spoke at the London meeting of the WHO (World Health Organisation) 'Healthy Cities' program about the need for urban planning to take into account the risk of infectious disease outbreaks. Here is the link to Michael's (<3 minute) talk on YouTube, and you can read about the Healthy Cities program on the WHO's website.

Children in Need

Many thanks for those who helped out and attended the Health Clinic last Friday to raise money for Children in Need. Really excellent feedback comments from all attendees. Funds raised were well in excess of £100. Well done! Below are some photos of the event.

Some Public feedback:
‘Very Interesting, well informed students, explained the science behind the readings well. Excellent!’ P Russell
‘Great experience. Was kept well informed. Students were very good, polite and explained things well’ A Kendall
‘Professional, Friendly and approachable’ H Drucker
‘Chris was very professional with ECG, put me at ease and explained everything well. Lucy was great, again explained the test very clearly’ J Perkin
‘Thank you Georgia, you have done a great job explaining everything to me’ J Ollington

HCS Student participants included Hannah Waite, Georgia Lott, Chris Grabham, Lucy Hickman, Hifza Tanveer, Emma Biggs, Carla Pas and Holly Pye. NEH students were Matthew Sharp, Luke Solomi and Wen Yu Ung. Clinical Cardiologist was Paul Huxham. 

Biomed graduate publishes expert review

Plymouth has an ever-increasing reputation in mucosal immunity, particularly that associated with probiotic bacteria and how this understanding can be harnessed in the control of the body’s defence mechanisms to pathogen infection. Investigations in both teleost fish (school of biological sciences) and human cell models (SoBHCS) have helped us gain a clearer understanding of the immune-regulatory effects of probiotic supplementation.

Amy Llewellyn, one of our graduates of biomedical science (pictured left), has just published her research focussing on probiotic modulation of immune cell signalling events in an international, peer-reviewed journal. In this account, Amy recounts her experience of the writing and publication processes and what this means to her future career development:

"I came to write this review with Dr Andrew Foey during my final year of Biomedical Science at Plymouth University in 2015. It was in fact Andy who inspired my passion for Immunology with his weird and wonderful immunology analogies throughout my studies at university. We discovered our shared interests during an exam revision session and began writing the review in summer 2015. And today, 23rd of October 2017, the review has been published in the latest edition of Nutrients!

Myself and Andy participated in the writing of this review equally and this involved many drafts, comments and back and forth emails to perfect the content of the review and ensure it encompassed our joint interests and the most current research. I thoroughly enjoyed every step in the process, from the literature review, to the drawing of pretty little cell signalling diagrams! The extensive literature review especially, provided me with a comprehensive understanding of the topic and proved very interesting.

The writing experience has taught me how much time, work and effort goes into writing academic reviews, but the hard work certainly pays off. I have seen a vast improvement in my writing skills and ability to critically analyse the literature. I am now a Research Assistant in an Ear and Respiratory Child Health team at Menzies School of Health Research, in Darwin, Australia and I have been able to expose my immunology interests to my current colleagues in a professional manner. This review may one day contribute to the acceptance of a PhD scholarship, which I hope to gain in the next 1-2 years. Publishing this review has given me the skills and confidence to take on further writing projects in the near future.

This would not have been possible without the outstanding level of expertise provided by Dr Andy Foey and his continued support in my abilities, not only throughout this writing process but throughout my university studies and towards my professional career which I hope to establish here in Australia. I am very proud of this achievement and look forward to one day writing another review!"

Andy adds: "I am also proud of this review and that it has been led by the enthusiasm and drive of one of our best graduates. This publication will have wide-reaching impact to the field of probiotics and immune regulation and I hope will inspire Amy to follow her dreams in pursuing a life-long career in immunology."