In his inaugural lecture, Professor Greening, will highlight the key role of the academic clinician in helping to translate basic research into clinical application, as well as converting clinical observation into basic research. He says: "Research discoveries that have led to major advances in our ability to treat many diseases have relied upon the skills of both basic scientists and clinicians."
Professor Greening, an expert in lung diseases such as asthma and cystic fibrosis, will illustrate the importance of clinical science from the perspectives of clinical observation and of applying basic science advances to clinical need. In support of the former, he will describe how international asthma management guidelines were changed by challenging flawed research. In support of the latter, he will discuss the current UK gene therapy programme for cystic fibrosis.
He says: "The need for critical methods for determining the success of gene therapy in this disease has driven our group to use state of the art basic research techniques, applied to clinical specimens, to determine the severity of inflammation in the airways. By applying proteomic techniques, initially to washings from the lung airways and latterly to induced sputum, highly specific proteins relating to the disease and the inflammation have been identified. The same
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Contact: Linda Menzies
Linda.Menzies@ed.ac.uk
44-131-650-6382
University of Edinburgh
17-Jan-2005