Talking Bodies

Join us for an exploration of the human stories behind the medical casebooks.

Archivist Dr Juulia Ahvensalmi & Museum Curator Dr Carol Shiels delve into the historical post mortem casebooks of St George’s Hospital, dating from 1841 to 1946, with stories about the patients and diseases they experienced, from smallpox to murder cases.

Platelets, tiny cell fragments that circulate in the blood, are responsible for forming blood clots. Platelets form clots after receiving signals from damaged blood vessels through receptors on the platelet surface. Unfortunately, platelet signalling can become dysregulated and can result in dangerous blood clots that can cause heart attacks and strokes. In my talk I will discuss how understanding precisely how platelet receptors signal may help us to create better anti-platelet drugs in the future.

• This talk will discuss how noise in our everyday environments can influence physical and mental health. It will consider the extent to which noise is a public health issue; whether noise is as important as air pollution; and what we can do to protect public health.

Do you know how squishy your cells are? Did you know that a squishy cell could be a sign of an aggressive cancer cell? In my talk, I will show you how cancer cells may use cell stiffness to their advantage to spread in the body. I will also show you the wonderful world of nanopipettes and how this tiny glass tube could be a cancer diagnostic tool.

Overgrowth disorders are characterised by unusual height sometimes accompanied by increased head circumference. Many children with overgrowth disorders have intellectual disability, and other clinical features (e.g. increased cancer risk). These conditions are caused by genetic mutations. The last 15 years has seen an explosion in the field of genomics improving our ability to hunt down disease-causing genes and mutations. We can also use exciting artificial intelligence to look for disease-associated patterns in the epigenome – the layer of chemical groups attached to DNA.