Forefront of Research

Knee Replacements

Professor of Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgery, David Rowley, has been awarded £1.4 million by the NHS Health Technology Agency to investigate the ideal design of total knee replacements currently in use. In a separate award Professor Rowley received £250,000 to assist his research on improving the design of artificial joints and associated surgical techniques.

Diabetes and Strokes

Diabetic patients are more prone to vascular disease such as stroke and heart attack and the reason may lie within each patient’s genetic make-up. Professor of Vascular Medicine, Jill Belch, has been awarded funding from Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland for a study using novel genetic technology developed at Dundee to link certain genes contributing to the control of risk factors with vascular behaviour. The ability to identify those patients at most risk of vascular disease could help doctors to come up with appropriate preventative treatment.

Help for Heart Attack Patients

Researchers at the University led by Michael Rennie, Professor of Physiology, are collaborating with colleagues at Glasgow University, with funding of £100,000 from the British Heart Foundation, to establish whether a simple, low-cost treatment could help recovery from heart attacks, angina sufferers and patients undergoing heart surgery. Previous studies suggest that glutamine can protect the heart when starved of oxygen as it is during a heart attack or angina pain. Glutamine, an amino-acid, is a natural substance which is one of the building blocks of protein molecules. The research aims to establish whether glutamine will definitely help recovery in the human heart. If so, it could lead to a safe, cheap and very effective way of helping more heart patients to make a good recovery.

Artificial Liver

An interdisciplinary research team led by Professor Brian Burchell, Molecular and Cellular Pathology, and Professor Roland Wolf, Dr Thomas Friedberg and Dr Cliff Elcombe of the Biomedical Research Centre, has embarked on a £1.5 million five-year project, supported by pharmaceutical companies, to produce genetically-engineered liver cells outside the body. The artificial liver would speed up the testing of new drugs and eliminate testing on animals. Although the artificial organ is unlikely to be used in transplant it could play a valuable role in taking over from a damaged liver until it had recovered.

Green Concrete

Professor Ravindra Dhir and his team at the Concrete Technology Unit, Department of Civil Engineering, are working on a £500,000 project to examine how waste ash can be safely used to make environmentally-friendly concrete. If successful the team will have solved a waste problem - at present waste ash is simply consigned to landfill sites - and produced a cheap and useful building material.

Dr Wolfram Meier-Augenstein, Anatomy and Physiology, has secured funding of £350,000 from a European medical charity to develop a new breath test for diagnosing or monitoring various body functions. If successful the Dundee breath test could replace painful blood samples or even tissue biopsies. Patients breathe into a tube, eat a cake containing tiny amounts of a harmless non-radioactive probe, then breathe into the tube again at regular intervals. Analysis of the breath samples should then cast light on how body organs are working. The Dundee cake (or flapjack) is pleasant-tasting and has a long shelf life.

Wisdom Teeth

Dr Chris Deery, Dental Health Services Research Unit, is co-ordinating a three-year £300,000 project funded by the NHS to help prevent dentists from extracting wisdom teeth unnecessarily. Evidence suggests that more than half such extractions are unnecessary. The new approach - via a software programme - will provide dentists with a user-friendly guide to new guidelines on wisdom teeth extraction including video footage of operations and X-ray images. Professor Ian Ricketts, Applied Computing, is overseeing the ‘computer’ end of the project, the software for which was created by researcher Craig Ramsay in conjunction with psychologists from St Andrews University.

Diabetes Database

Dundee’s reputation as a leading centre in the epidemiology of diabetes has been confirmed by a further grant (£214,000) from the Scottish Office to continue the work of DARTS (Diabetes Audit and Research in Tayside Scotland), a unique project which uses state-of-the-art information technology to create a regional diabetes research network on over 16,000 patients. The collaboration of all health care professionals in Tayside has enabled the creation of a diabetes database unrivalled in Europe. The Scottish Office grant will complement existing projects awarded to the group including one in collaboration with the Biomedical Research Centre to look at the genetic epidemiology of the vascular complications of diabetes.

Hands-off Computers for the Disabled

Professor Ian Ricketts and Dr Stephen McKenna of the internationally-rated Department of Applied Computing, renowned for developing technology to assist the disabled, have received funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to develop software that responds directly to an individual’s expressions and gestures. If successful this project could mean an end to head-worn sticks, blow tubes and cumbersome glove devices currently used by disabled people.

Leukaemia

Professor Eric Wright, a distinguished scientist in molecular and cellular pathology, has re-located to Dundee after securing £1 million funding from the Medical Research Council to continue his research into the mechanics involved in cellular mutation, particularly radiation-induced. Professor Wright and the MRC chose Dundee as the best location for his research because of all the related work going on here. Professor Wright’s work aims to reduce the chances of patients contracting leukaemia following radiotherapy.