A Scar is Born: how our organs heal

We all know at least one person who suffers with heart disease which affects 7.6 million people in the UK and is the biggest cause of death in the world. Improved healthcare and treatments now mean that most patients survive heart attacks. However, they can cause scarring of the heart, and if that’s left untreated the scar grows, and eventually leads to heart failure. My work focuses on understanding how heart failure develops and how we can treat it. We’ve shown using new cutting-edge technology that manipulation of Sox9 protein can reduce this scarring and improve heart function - is this

Why do some people get liver disease and others do not? How can you tell if you have liver disease already? What is cirrhosis and how does it start? Working from laboratory research trying to understand how liver disease develops and progresses has led to identifying blood tests that help us tell if you have liver disease. As liver disease is nearly silent until very late stages it is important to have methods to identify earlier. We are using novel technology to identify people using risk factors. We then use the blood tests I have previously discovered to assess their risk of liver disease.

Internal scars or ‘adhesions’ are the side effect of surgery to the gut. Adhesions can cause severe pain and even life-threatening gut blockage. Unfortunately, there are currently no ways to prevent or cure adhesions and so they seriously impact on many people’s lives. In our research studies we are asking: Are adhesions like scars in other places? How do adhesions form? And we are investigating new treatments to prevent adhesions by using special bioactive factors incorporated into dissolving gels that are placed near the site of surgery. Hopefully this can help stop the blockages.