University News

They have just won an award to develop their technology, which aims to make hip surgery more precise and deliver better and longer-lasting outcomes – which is good for patients and the NHS.

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has awarded a £1.4 million Invention for Innovation (i4i) Product Development Award to advance work on the team’s “smart” joint “trial liner”.

The sensors measure forces passing through the hip joint to help the surgeon assess and balance the soft tissues, which aids the accurate positioning of the implant.

Once measurements are complete using the wireless surgical aid, the surgeon marks the ideal position for the implant, removes the smart trial liner, and completes the operation.

There are currently no technologies that can deliver such readings during an operation and in real-time, and instead surgeons balance the joint based on feel and anatomical landmarks.

This is despite over two million total hip replacements being performed annually, with the number constantly rising due to increasing lifespans. Younger patients are starting to need hip replacements as well, so implants need to withstand higher stresses and last longer, to avoid spiralling into a vicious circle of revision surgery and higher rates of dissatisfaction.

Driving this clinical initiative is the chief investigator from Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) NHS Foundation Trust, Consultant orthopaedic surgeon, clinical and research lead of the Young Adult Hip Service, and Affiliate Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge Vikas Khanduja.

The technology development is being overseen by Professor Sohini Kar-Narayan from Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, together with Dr Jehangir Cama, who is leading on translational and commercialisation activities. They are joined by Consultant clinical scientist and CUH head of clinical engineering, Professor Paul White.

“We’re really looking forward to this next phase of product development that will see us move towards an actual product that is fit for clinical use, and that has the potential to revolutionise joint replacement surgery,” said Kar-Narayan.

“This funding will bring together wide-ranging expertise to help us further develop our prototype, bringing this technology closer to clinical use,” said Cama.

The team currently has a prototype version of the device, which has been validated in the laboratory and in other tests. However, the NIHR award is important for further development and finalisation of the design and compliance with regulations before it can be tested in a living patient.

The team’s underlying sensor technology intellectual property has been protected via a patent application filed by Cambridge Enterprise, the University’s commercialisation arm.

“This is a fantastic example of Cambridge’s entrepreneurial clinicians, academics and their institutions working together with forward-looking funders to create a positive impact for markets, society and importantly patients,” said Dr Terry Parlett, Commercialisation Director at Cambridge Enterprise.

Adapted from a CUH press release.

Technology that could transform the future of hip replacement surgery is being pioneered by a team of experts in Cambridge.

SEBASTIAN KAULITZKI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty ImagesIllustration of a human hip joint

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Yes

The international team, co-led by the University of Cambridge, used Webb to observe a galaxy roughly the size of the Milky Way in the early universe, about two billion years after the Big Bang. Like most large galaxies, it has a supermassive black hole at its centre. However, this galaxy is essentially ‘dead’: it has mostly stopped forming new stars.

“Based on earlier observations, we knew this galaxy was in a quenched state: it’s not forming many stars given its size, and we expect there is a link between the black hole and the end of star formation,” said co-lead author Dr Francesco D’Eugenio from Cambridge’s Kavli Institute for Cosmology. “However, until Webb, we haven’t been able to study this galaxy in enough detail to confirm that link, and we haven’t known whether this quenched state is temporary or permanent.”

This galaxy, officially named GS-10578 but nicknamed ‘Pablo’s Galaxy’ after the colleague who decided to observe it in detail, is massive for such an early period in the universe: its total mass is about 200 billion times the mass of our Sun, and most of its stars formed between 12.5 and 11.5 billion years ago.

“In the early universe, most galaxies are forming lots of stars, so it’s interesting to see such a massive dead galaxy at this period in time,” said co-author Professor Roberto Maiolino, also from the Kavli Institute for Cosmology. “If it had enough time to get to this massive size, whatever process that stopped star formation likely happened relatively quickly.”

Using Webb, the researchers detected that this galaxy is expelling large amounts of gas at speeds of about 1,000 kilometres per second, which is fast enough to escape the galaxy’s gravitational pull. These fast-moving winds are being ‘pushed’ out of the galaxy by the black hole.

Like other galaxies with accreting black holes, ‘Pablo’s Galaxy’ has fast outflowing winds of hot gas, but these gas clouds are tenuous and have little mass. Webb detected the presence of a new wind component, which could not be seen with earlier telescopes. This gas is colder, which means it’s denser and – crucially – does not emit any light. Webb, with its superior sensitivity, can see these dark gas clouds because they block some of the light from the galaxy behind them.

The mass of gas being ejected from the galaxy is greater than what the galaxy would require to keep forming new stars. In essence, the black hole is starving the galaxy to death. The results are reported in the journal Nature Astronomy.

“We found the culprit,” said D’Eugenio. “The black hole is killing this galaxy and keeping it dormant, by cutting off the source of ‘food’ the galaxy needs to form new stars.”

Although earlier theoretical models had predicted that black holes had this effect on galaxies, before Webb, it had not been possible to detect this effect directly.

Earlier models had predicted that the end of star formation has a violent, turbulent effect on galaxies, destroying their shape in the process. But the stars in this disc-shaped galaxy are still moving in an orderly way, suggesting that this is not always the case.

“We knew that black holes have a massive impact on galaxies, and perhaps it’s common that they stop star formation, but until Webb, we weren’t able to directly confirm this,” said Maiolino. “It’s yet another way that Webb is such a giant leap forward in terms of our ability to study the early universe and how it evolved.”

New observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter-Submillimiter Array (ALMA), targeting the coldest, darkest gas components of the galaxy, will tell us more about if and where any fuel for star formation is still hidden in this galaxy, and what is the effect of the supermassive black hole in the region surrounding the galaxy.

The research was supported in part by the Royal Society, the European Union, the European Research Council, and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Reference:
Francesco D’Eugenio, Pablo G. Pérez-González et al. ‘A fast-rotator post-starburst galaxy quenched by supermassive black-hole feedback at z=3.’ Nature Astronomy (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-024-02345-1

Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope to confirm that supermassive black holes can starve their host galaxies of the fuel they need to form new stars.

JADES Collaboration'Pablo's Galaxy'

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YesLicence type: Public Domain

An international group of researchers, led by the Copenhagen Business School, the University of Basel and the University of Cambridge, surveyed 4,000 people from Denmark, India, Nigeria and the United States about inequality in personal carbon footprints – the total amount of greenhouse gases produced by a person’s activities – within their own country.

Although it is well-known that there is a large gap between the carbon footprint of the richest and poorest in society, it’s been unclear whether individuals were aware of this inequality. The four countries chosen for the survey are all different in terms of wealth, lifestyle and culture. Survey participants also differed in their personal income, with half of participants belonging to the top 10% of income in their country.

The vast majority of participants across the four countries overestimated the average personal carbon footprint of the poorest 50% and underestimated those of the richest 10% and 1%.

However, participants from the top 10% were more likely to support certain climate policies, such as increasing the price of electricity during peak periods, taxing red meat consumption or subsidising carbon dioxide removal technologies such as carbon capture and storage.

The researchers say that this may reflect generally higher education levels among high earners, a greater ability to absorb price-based policies or a stronger preference for technological solutions to the climate crisis. The results are reported in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Although the concept of a personal carbon or environmental footprint has been used for over 40 years, it became widely popularised in the mid-2000s, when the fossil fuel company BP ran a large advertising campaign encouraging people to determine and reduce their personal carbon footprint.

“There are definitely groups out there who would like to push the responsibility of reducing carbon emissions away from corporations and onto individuals, which is problematic,” said co-author Dr Ramit Debnath, Assistant Professor and Cambridge Zero Fellow at the University of Cambridge. “However, personal carbon footprints can illustrate the profound inequality within and between countries and help people identify how to live in a more climate-friendly way.”

Previous research has shown widespread misperceptions about how certain consumer behaviours affect an individual's carbon footprint. For example, recycling, shutting off the lights when leaving a room and avoiding plastic packaging are lower-impact behaviours that are overestimated in terms of how much they can reduce one’s carbon footprint. On the other end, the impact of behaviours such as red meat consumption, heating and cooling homes, and air travel all tend to be underestimated.

However, there is limited research on whether these misperceptions extend to people’s perceptions of the composition and scale of personal carbon footprints and their ability to make comparisons between different groups.

The four countries selected for the survey (Denmark, India, Nigeria and the US) were chosen due to their different per-capita carbon emissions and their levels of economic inequality. Within each country, approximately 1,000 participants were surveyed, with half of each participant group from the top 10% of their country and the other half from the bottom 90%.

Participants were asked to estimate the average personal carbon footprints specific to three income groups (the bottom 50%, the top 10%, and the top 1% of income) within their country. Most participants overestimated the average personal carbon footprint for the bottom 50% of income and underestimated the average footprints for the top 10% and top 1% of income.

“These countries are very different, but we found the rich are pretty similar no matter where you go, and their concerns are different to the rest of society,” said Debnath. “There’s a huge contrast between billionaires travelling by private jet while the rest of us drink with soggy paper straws: one of those activities has a big impact on an individual carbon footprint, and one doesn’t.”

The researchers also looked at whether people’s ideas of carbon footprint inequality were related to their support for different climate policies. They found that Danish and Nigerian participants who underestimated carbon footprint inequality were generally less supportive of climate policies. They also found that Indian participants from the top 10% were generally more supportive of climate policies, potentially reflecting their higher education and greater resources.

“Poorer people have more immediate concerns, such as how they’re going to pay their rent, or support their families,” said first author Dr Kristian Steensen Nielsen from Copenhagen Business School. “But across all income groups, people want real solutions to the climate crisis, whether those are regulatory or technological. However, the people with the highest carbon footprints bear the greatest responsibility for changing their lifestyles and reducing their footprints.”

After learning about the actual carbon footprint inequality, most participants found it slightly unfair, with those in Denmark and the United States finding it the most unfair. However, people from the top 10% generally found the inequality fairer than the general population, except in India. “This could be because they’re trying to justify their larger carbon footprints,” said Debnath.

The researchers say that more work is needed to determine the best ways to promote fairness and justice in climate action across countries, cultures and communities.

“Due to their greater financial and political influence, most climate policies reflect the interests of the richest in society and rarely involve fundamental changes to their lifestyles or social status,” said Debnath.

“Greater awareness and discussion of existing inequality in personal carbon footprints can help build political pressure to address these inequalities and develop climate solutions that work for all,” said Nielsen.

The study also involved researchers from Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Murdoch University and Oxford University. The research was supported in part by the Carlsberg Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Quadrature Climate Foundation and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Reference:
Kristian S Nielsen et al. ‘Underestimation of personal carbon footprint inequality in four diverse countries.’ Nature Climate Change (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-024-02130-y 

The personal carbon footprint of the richest people in society is grossly underestimated, both by the rich themselves and by those on middle and lower incomes, no matter which country they come from. At the same time, both the rich and the poor drastically overestimate the carbon footprint of the poorest people.

SolStock via Getty ImagesA father and two sons running on a beach

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Yes

Currently cancer is usually diagnosed when tumours are already developed requiring, often significant, treatment to remove them and prevent further growth.

However, a research team at the University of Cambridge will receive over £1.5m from Cancer Research UK over the next six years to investigate how the immune system evolves, targets and kills cancer cells as tumours are developing.

They hope by detecting the trigger point when our own body starts to recognise cancerous cells, it may help find a way to spark our own immune system into action so it kills cancer cells before tumours can even begin.

This could vastly reduce the amount of treatment people diagnosed with cancer require, which can often have significant side effects. The pioneering work could benefit millions of cancer patients before the disease becomes life-threatening or spreads.

Dr Heather Machado is leading a team of scientists at the Department of Pathology, looking at the body's immune system's ability to fight cancer.  Dr Machado’s work on T cells – part of the immune system which fight infection and disease, including cancer – will provide an insight into how long before a diagnosis these cells recognize and respond to cancer.

The study will specifically examine how T cells respond to cancer when they first recognise and respond to a tumour in the kidneys or the liver.

The breakthrough study has the potential to unlock the mystery as to how our immune cells work to fight cancer.

Dr Machado said: “Using mutations that naturally accumulate in each of our cells as we age, we can essentially build a family tree of T-cells, and this family tree has information about when T-cells met cancer for the first time. This research is only now possible as a result of advancements in DNA sequencing technology.

“This research has the potential to give an entirely new perspective on the role of the immune system in cancer progression, findings that we hope to use to further improve lifesaving cancer immunotherapies.”

Her aim is to see if they could lead to specific immunotherapy treatments and ways of detecting the cancer earlier.

She added: “Most cancers are diagnosed years or decades after early tumour development, which can often be too late. Our methods will allow us to go back in the cancer’s timeline to understand the immune response in these early stages of cancer development. Beyond improving immunotherapies, we hope that this understanding helps us detect cancer earlier, at stages where survival rates are much higher.”

The body’s immune system is the first line of defence against cancer but previously it has been difficult to observe this early response in humans.

Dr Machado will use genome sequencing which determines the genetic makeup of an organism to study how a tumour and the immune cells co-evolve over the course of tumour development. 

She will time T cell clonal expansions using evolutionary trees built from the genomes of individual T cells, exploiting recent advancements in single-cell whole genome sequencing. Dr Machado will then perform these experiments using early-stage kidney and liver cancer resections and by sampling throughout the course of immunotherapy in metastatic kidney cancer.”

She added: “The study is believed to be the first of its kind in the world and it has the potential to be groundbreaking research as we have never been able to examine these evolutionary dynamics in humans before. How long before a tumour is diagnosed has the immune system been responding is an incredibly hard problem to solve because these immune dynamics play out years prior to diagnosis.

“Normal cells evolve into tumours, and we are blind to much of that process and yet the immune system is one of our best tools for fighting cancer.

Dr Machado studied for her PhD at Stanford University and completed her post doctorate research at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK. She added: “We are using cutting edge technology that is only available now and we are going to be able to discover how the immune system responds to tumours unlike we have ever seen before and that, is potentially life changing in terms of improving immunotherapies for better health and patient prognosis.”

Find out how Cambridge is changing the story of cancer

Adapted from a press release from Cancer Research UK

A new study aims, for the first time, to pinpoint the very moment the immune system recognises a tumour to try to stop the disease earlier than previously possible.

This research has the potential to give an entirely new perspective on the role of the immune system in cancer progressionHeather MachadoSamirCT scan showing cholangiocarcinoma

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YesLicence type: Attribution-ShareAlike

The statistics for the University of Cambridge are available on our website as part of our ongoing commitment to transparency and openness around the use of animals in research.

This coincides with the publication of the Home Office’s report on the statistics of scientific procedures on living animals in Great Britain in 2023.

The 10 organisations carried out 1,435,009 procedures, 54% (over half) of the 2,681,686 procedures carried out on animals for scientific research in Great Britain in 2023. Of these 1,435,009 procedures, more than 99% were carried out on mice, fish and rats and 82% were classified as causing pain equivalent to, or less than, an injection.

The 10 organisations are listed below alongside the total number of procedures they carried out in 2023. This is the ninth consecutive year that organisations have come together to publicise their collective statistics and examples of their research.

Organisation Number of Procedures (2023) University of Cambridge 223,787 University of Oxford 194,913 The Francis Crick Institute 192,920 UCL 176,019 University of Edinburgh 139,881 Medical Research Council 124,156 University of Manchester 110,885 King's College London 109,779 University of Glasgow 102,089 Imperial College London 60,580 TOTAL 1,435,009

 

In total, 69 organisations have voluntarily published their 2023 animal research statistics.

All organisations are committed to the ethical framework called the ‘3Rs’ of replacement, reduction and refinement. This means avoiding or replacing the use of animals where possible, minimising the number of animals used per experiment and optimising the experience of the animals to improve animal welfare. However, as institutions expand and conduct more research, the total number of animals used can rise even if fewer animals are used per study. 

All organisations listed are signatories to the Concordat on Openness on Animal Research in the UK, which commits them to being more open about the use of animals in scientific, medical and veterinary research in the UK. More than 125 organisations have signed the Concordat, including UK universities, medical research charities, research funders, learned societies and commercial research organisations.

Wendy Jarrett, Chief Executive of Understanding Animal Research, which developed the Concordat on Openness, said:

“Animal research remains a small but vital part of the quest for new medicines, vaccines and treatments for humans and animals. Alternative methods are gradually being phased in, but, until we have sufficient reliable alternatives available, it is important that organisations that use animals in research maintain the public’s trust in them. By providing this level of information about the numbers of animals used, and the experience of those animals, as well as details of the medical breakthroughs that derive from this research, these Concordat signatories are helping the public to make up their own minds about how they feel about the use of animals in scientific research in Great Britain.”   

Professor Anna Philpott, Head of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Cambridge, said:

“Cambridge research is changing how we understand health and ageing, and how we treat disease. Animal research continues to play a small but vital role in this work and in the development of ground-breaking new medical devices and drug treatments. We are committed to using animals only where there is no alternative as a means of making progress.”

Story adapted from a press release by Understanding Animal Research.

 

CASE STUDY: Egging on vital research

The actin cytoskeleton is a system of long filaments, vital in embryonic development. Problems with its control have been linked to the kidney problems experienced by patients with the rare conditions called Lowe syndrome and Dent disease 2. But since the actin cytoskeleton is in all the cells of the body it has been very difficult to translate an understanding of it into a drug treatment.

Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow Dr Jenny Gallop at the University of Cambridge has created a simpler version of the actin cytoskeleton that she can study in the lab. A key component is cytoplasm extracted from frog eggs.

Gallop’s lab keeps around 120 female frogs that are induced to lay eggs in a way that matches their natural cycles. This requires a hormone injection - just a mild discomfort to the frogs - every three to four months to make them ovulate. Over time, Gallop has refined her methods so that only half the original number of frogs are now needed.

This has enabled her to understand what might be going wrong in Lowe syndrome and Dent disease 2 – and realise that an existing drug might be able to help. Alpelisib has already been approved to safely treat breast cancer, and Gallop is now applying for approval to test whether it works to treat the kidney problems in patients with Dent disease 2.

Repurposing an existing drug means the long drug-development process has already been done. Conversations with people affected by the diseases inspire Gallop’s team to keep going. And the frogs have played a vital role in this decade-long journey.

Read the full story

The 10 organisations in Great Britain that carry out the highest number of animal procedures - those used in medical, veterinary and scientific research – have released their annual statistics today.

Jacqueline GargetAfrican Clawed Frogs held in water-filled tanks

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YesLicence type: Attribution

Of 3,500 proposals reviewed by the ERC, only 14% were selected for funding – Cambridge has the highest number of grants of any UK institution.

ERC Starting Grants – totalling nearly €780 million – support cutting-edge research in a wide range of fields, from life sciences and physics to social sciences and humanities.

The awards help researchers at the beginning of their careers to launch their own projects, form their teams and pursue their most promising ideas. Starting Grants amount to €1.5 million per grant for a period of five years but additional funds can be made available.

In total, the grants are estimated to create 3,160 jobs for postdoctoral fellows, PhD students and other staff at host institutions.

Cambridge’s recipients work in a wide range of fields including plant sciences, mathematics and medicine. They are among 494 laureates who will be leading projects at universities and research centres in 24 EU Member States and associated countries. This year, the UK has received grants for 50 projects, Germany 98, France 49, and the Netherlands 51.

Cambridge’s grant recipients for 2024 are:

Adrian Baez-Ortega (Dept. of Veterinary Medicine, Wellcome Sanger Institute) for Exploring the mechanisms of long-term tumour evolution and genomic instability in marine transmissible cancers

Claudia Bonfio (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology) for Lipid Diversity at the Onset of Life

Tom Gur (Dept. of Computer Science and Technology) for Sublinear Quantum Computation

Leonie Luginbuehl (Dept. of Plant Sciences) for Harnessing mechanisms for plant carbon delivery to symbiotic soil fungi for sustainable food production

Julian Sahasrabudhe (Dept. of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics) for High Dimensional Probability and Combinatorics

Richard Timms (Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease) for Deciphering the regulatory logic of the ubiquitin system

Hannah Übler (Dept. of Physics) for Active galactic nuclei and Population III stars in early galaxies

Julian Willis (Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry) for Studying viral protein-primed DNA replication to develop new gene editing technologies

Federica Gigante (Faculty of History) for Unveiling Networks: Slavery and the European Encounter with Islamic Material Culture (1580– 1700) – Grant hosted by the University of Oxford

 

Professor Sir John Aston FRS, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of Cambridge, said:

“Many congratulations to the recipients of these awards which reflect the innovation and the vision of these outstanding investigators. We are fortunate to have many exceptional young researchers across a wide range of disciplines here in Cambridge and awards such as these highlight some of the amazing research taking place across the university. I wish this year’s recipients all the very best as they begin their new programmes and can’t wait to see the outcomes of their work.”

Iliana Ivanova, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said:

“The European Commission is proud to support the curiosity and passion of our early-career talent under our Horizon Europe programme. The new ERC Starting Grants winners aim to deepen our understanding of the world. Their creativity is vital to finding solutions to some of the most pressing societal challenges. In this call, I am happy to see one of the highest shares of female grantees to date, a trend that I hope will continue. Congratulations to all!”

President of the European Research Council, Prof. Maria Leptin, said:

“Empowering researchers early on in their careers is at the heart of the mission of the ERC. I am particularly pleased to welcome UK researchers back to the ERC. They have been sorely missed over the past years. With fifty grants awarded to researchers based in the UK, this influx is good for the research community overall.”

Nine Cambridge researchers are among the latest recipients of highly competitive and prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants.

Luginbuehl labPlant roots interacting with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Image: Luginbuehl lab

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YesLicence type: Attribution

Car travel contributes to air pollution, a major cause of heart and lung diseases including asthma attacks. Beyond this, it limits children's opportunities for physical activity, hindering their development and mental health, and increasing their risk of obesity and chronic illnesses.

Despite UK guidelines recommending a daily average of 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity for school-aged children and adolescents, less than half (45%) of children aged 5-16 met these levels in 2021. One in three children aged 10-11 in the UK are overweight or obese.

In April 2019, London introduced the ULEZ to help improve air quality by reducing the number of vehicles on the road that do not meet emissions standards. According to Transport for London, the central London ULEZ reduced harmful nitrogen oxides by 35% and particulate matter by 15% in central London within the first 10 months of its introduction.

In a study published today in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, a team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge and Queen Mary University of London examined the impact of the ULEZ on how children travelled to school. The research was part of the CHILL study (Children’s Health in London and Luton).

The study examined data from almost 2,000 children aged six to nine years attending 84 primary schools in London and the control area, Luton. 44 schools were located with catchment areas within or bordering London’s ULEZ, and these were compared to a similar number in Luton and Dunstable (acting as a comparison group). The inclusion of the comparison site enabled the researchers to draw more robust conclusions and increased confidence in attributing the observed changes to the introduction of the ULEZ.

The researchers collected data from the period June 2018 to April 2019, prior to ULEZ implementation, and again in the period June 2019 to March 2020, the year after implementation of the ULEZ but prior to COVID-19-related school closures.

Among those children in London who travelled by car prior to the introduction of the ULEZ, four in 10 (42%) switched to active modes, while one in 20 (5%) switched from active to inactive modes.

In contrast, only two in ten (20%) children in Luton swapped from car travel to active modes, while a similar number (21%) switched from active to car travel. This means that children in London within the ULEZ were 3.6 times as likely to shift from travelling by car to active travel modes compared to those children in Luton and far less likely (0.11 times) to switch to inactive modes.

The impact of the ULEZ on switching to active travel modes was strongest for those children living more than half a mile (0.78km) from school.  This was probably because many children who live closer to school already walked or cycled to school prior to the ULEZ and therefore there was more potential for change in those living further away from their school.

The study’s first author, Dr Christina Xiao from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, said: “The introduction of the ULEZ was associated with positive changes in how children travelled to school, with a much larger number of children moving from inactive to active modes of transport in London than in Luton.

“Given children's heightened vulnerability to air pollution and the critical role of physical activity for their health and development, financial disincentives for car use could encourage healthier travel habits among this young population, even if they do not necessarily target them.”

Joint senior author Dr Jenna Panter from the MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, said: “The previous government was committed to increasing the share of children walking to school by 2025 and we hope the new government will follow suit. Changing the way children travel to school can have significant effects on their levels of physical activity at the same time as bringing other co-benefits like improving congestion and air quality, as about a quarter of car trips during peak morning hours in London are made for school drop-offs.”

After ULEZ was introduced in Central London, the total number of vehicles on the roads fell by 9%, and by one-third (34%) for vehicles that failed to meet the required exhaust emission standards, with no clear evidence of traffic moving instead to nearby areas.

Joint senior author Professor Chris Griffiths from the Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London, said: “Establishing healthy habits early is critical to healthy adulthood and the prevention of disabling long term illness, especially obesity and the crippling diseases associated with it. The robust design of our study, with Luton as a comparator area, strongly suggests the ULEZ is driving this switch to active travel. This is evidence that Clean Air Zone intervention programmes aimed at reducing air pollution have the potential to also improve overall public health by addressing key factors that contribute to illness.”

Due to the introduction of COVID-19 restrictions in late March 2020, the study was paused in 2020/2021 and results are only reported for the first year of follow-up. However, as both London and Luton, the study areas, were similarly affected, the researchers believe this disruption is unlikely to have affected the results. The study has restarted following up with the children to examine the longer-term impacts of the ULEZ. This will identify if the changes they observed in the year following the introduction of the ULEZ persist.

The study was conducted in collaboration with Queen Mary University of London, Imperial College, University of Bedfordshire, University of Edinburgh, University of Oxford and University of Southern California and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research Public Health Research (NIHR), NIHR Applied Research Collaboration North Thames, and Cambridge Trust. 

Reference
Xiao, C et al. Children’s Health in London and Luton (CHILL) cohort: A 12-month natural experimental study of the effects of the Ultra Low Emission Zone on children’s travel to school. IJBNPA; 5 Sept 2024; DOI: 10.1186/s12966-024-01621-7

Four in ten children in Central London who travelled to school by car switched to more active modes of transport, such as walking, cycling, or public transport, following the introduction of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), according to new research. In the comparison area with no ULEZ, Luton, only two in ten children made this switch over the same period.

Changing the way children travel to school can have significant effects on their levels of physical activity at the same time as bringing other co-benefits like improving congestion and air qualityJenna PanterMatt BrownULEZ signs (cropped)

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YesLicence type: Attribution

The research also suggests that people who are taking lipid-lowering drugs such as statins to lower their cholesterol levels should remain on them, even if their cholesterol levels have fallen, as stopping treatment could increase their risk of atherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis is one of the major causes of heart and circulatory disease. It involves the hardening and narrowing of the vessels that carry blood to and from the heart. It is caused by the build-up of abnormal material called plaques – collections of fat, cholesterol, calcium and other substances circulating in the blood.

Atherosclerosis is largely considered a disease of the elderly and so most screening, prevention and intervention programmes primarily target those with high cholesterol levels, generally after the age of 50.

But in a study published today in Nature, a team led by scientists at the University of Cambridge shows that high cholesterol levels at a younger age – particularly if those levels fluctuate – can be even more damaging than high cholesterol levels that only begin in later life.

To study the mechanisms that underlie atherosclerosis, scientists often use animal modes, such as mice. The mice will typically be fed a high fat diet for several weeks as adults to see how this leads to the build up of the plaques characteristic of the condition.

Professor Ziad Mallat and colleagues at the Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Heart and Lung Research Institute at the University of Cambridge decided to explore a different approach – to see whether giving mice the same amount of high fat food but spread over their lifetime changed their atherosclerosis risk.

“When I asked my group and a number of people who are experts in atherosclerosis, no one could tell me what the result would be,” said Professor Mallat, a British Heart Foundation (BHF) Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine.

“Some people thought it would make no difference, others thought it would change the risk. In fact, what we found was that an intermittent high fat diet starting while the mice were still young – one week on, a few weeks off, another week on, and so on – was the worst option in terms of atherosclerosis risk.”

Armed with this information, his team turned to the Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study, one of the largest follow-up studies into cardiovascular risk from childhood to adulthood. Participants recruited in the 1980s returned for follow-up over the subsequent decades, and more than 2,000 of them had received ultrasound scans of their carotid arteries when they were aged around 30 years and again at around 50 years.

Analysing the data, the team found that those participants who had been exposed to high cholesterol levels as children tended to have the biggest build of plaques, confirming the findings in mice.

“What this means is that we shouldn’t leave it until later in life before we start to look at our cholesterol levels,” Professor Mallat said. “Atherosclerosis can potentially be prevented by lowering cholesterol levels, but we clearly need to start thinking about this much earlier on in life than we previously thought.”

The mouse studies showed that fluctuating levels of cholesterol appeared to cause the most damage. Professor Mallat says this could explain why some people who are on statins but do not take them regularly remain at an increased risk of heart attack.

“If you stop and start your statin treatment, your body is being exposed to a yo-yo of cholesterol, which it doesn’t like, and it seems this interferes with your body’s ability to prevent the build-up of plaques,” he added.

The reason why this is so damaging may come down to the effect that cholesterol has on specific types of immune cells known as ‘resident arterial macrophages’. These reside in your arteries, helping them to clear damaged cells and fatty molecules known as lipids, which include cholesterol, and stopping the build-up of plaques.

When the team examined these macrophages in their mouse models, they found that high cholesterol levels – and in particular, fluctuating cholesterol levels – changed them physically and altered the activity of their genes. This meant that the cells were no longer protective, but were instead detrimental, accelerating atherosclerosis.

The research was funded by the British Heart Foundation.

Reference
Takaoka, M et al. Early intermittent hyperlipidaemia alters tissue macrophages to boost atherosclerosis. Nature; 4 Sept 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07993-x

Our risk of developing atherosclerosis – ‘furring’ of the arteries – can begin much earlier in life than was previously thought, highlighting the need to keep cholesterol levels low even when we are young, new research has discovered.

Atherosclerosis can potentially be prevented by lowering cholesterol levels, but we clearly need to start thinking about this much earlier on in lifeZiad MallatSolStock (Getty Images)Teenagers eating pizza by the river

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Yes

These are among the conclusions of Time to Care: findings from a nationally representative survey of experiences at the end of life in England and Wales, a new report funded by end-of-life charity Marie Curie and produced by King’s College London’s Cicely Saunders Institute, Hull York Medical School at University of Hull, and the University of Cambridge.

Time to Care aims to describe the outcomes, experiences, and use of care services by people affected by dying, death, and bereavement in England and Wales. It is the final report from the Marie Curie Better End of life programme.

The report found one in five dying people had no contact with their GP in the last three months of life.

Half of people surveyed (49%) said their dying loved one visited A&E at least once in their final three months of life, and one in eight people who died in hospital had been there less than 24 hours. 

Half of respondents (49%) in the study were also unhappy with at least one aspect of the care the person who died received and of those one in eight people made a formal complaint. Fewer than half of respondents said they had a key contact person to co-ordinate their care. This meant responsibility for care fell on informal carers (family and friends), who often felt unprepared and unsupported.

Professor Stephen Barclay, from the Department of Public Health & Primary Care at the University of Cambridge, a researcher on the project and a practicing GP, said: “GPs, Community Nurses and the wider Primary Care Team have a central and often under-recognised role in the care of people approaching and at the end of their lives. But they are under enormous pressure with increasing workloads, diminishing workforces and inadequate investment over recent years.

“Increasing numbers of people have been dying in the community during and following the COVID-19 pandemic, at home or in care homes. This important survey, undertaken at a time when the NHS was beginning to recover from the worst of the pandemic, reveals how clinical teams in all settings are struggling to meet the needs of this vulnerable patient group.

“The out-of-hours period, which comprises two-thirds of the week, is particularly difficult for patients and their families. Across the UK, GPs and Community Nurses want to provide excellent palliative and end of life care, but the necessary ‘time to care’ is currently often squeezed. The new UK Government’s focus on care close to home is welcome. This report highlights the need for a radical repurposing of NHS funding to resource primary care for that ambition to be achieved.”

The research report is based on a survey sent by the Office for National Statistics in 2023 to a nationally representative sample of people who had registered the death of a family member in the prior six to 10 months. Only non-sudden causes of death were included. Responses were received from 1179 people, making this the largest nationally representative post-bereavement survey in England and Wales for a decade.

Professor Katherine Sleeman, from King’s College London and lead researcher on the project, said:  “This study reveals patchy and inconsistent provision of care for people approaching the end of life. While there were examples of excellent care - including in the community, in care homes, and in hospitals - the overall picture is of services that are overstretched, and of health and care staff lacking the time they need to consistently provide high-quality care. This means that dying people miss out on treatment and care for their symptoms, and families are left feeling unprepared and unsupported which has lasting emotional repercussions into bereavement.

The researchers say the findings are concerning, considering the ageing population and the expected increase in palliative care needs across the UK. By 2048, there will be an additional 147,000 people in the UK who need palliative care before they die, an increase of 25%.

“Without a corresponding increase in capacity of primary and community care teams to support these people as they approach the end of life, the quality of care is likely to further suffer,” said Professor Sleeman. “It has never been more important to ensure high-quality palliative care for all who need it.”

Annette Weatherley, Marie Curie Chief Nursing Officer, added: “The findings are shocking.  Too many people are dying in avoidable pain, struggling with breathlessness and other debilitating symptoms because of the difficulties they face accessing the end-of-life care they need from overstretched GPs and other health and care workers.

“Without urgent action, gaps in access to palliative and end of life care will only grow.

“It is a critical time to improve palliative and end of life care. People at the end of life should be able to have the very best possible care. There is only one chance to get it right at the end of life.  Yet, as the evidence shows, too many people are being failed by a system faced with extreme financial and workforce pressures.  It’s time for Governments to step up and fix care of the dying.”

Professor Stephen Barclay is a fellow at Emmmanuel College, Cambridge.

Adapted from a press release by Marie Curie

One in three dying people in England and Wales was severely or overwhelmingly affected by pain in the last week of life, with bereaved people reporting how difficult it was to get joined-up support from health and care professionals at home.

This report highlights the need for a radical repurposing of NHS funding to resource primary care for that ambition to be achievedStephen BarclayAlexander GreyExperimental coloured image of two hands touching

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YesLicence type: Public Domain

A cancer drug that unlocks the anti-inflammatory power of the immune system could help to reduce the risk of future heart attacks, according to research part-funded by the British Heart Foundation. By repurposing an existing drug, researchers hope it could soon become part of routine treatment for patients after a heart attack.

The findings will be presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in London by Dr Rouchelle Sriranjan, NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Cardiology at the University of Cambridge.

High levels of inflammation in blood vessels are linked to an increased risk of heart disease and heart attacks. After a heart attack, the body’s immune response can aggravate existing inflammation, causing more harm and increasing risk even further. However, NICE guidelines don’t currently recommend the use of any anti-inflammatory drugs to reduce future risk.

Now, a team of researchers, led by Dr Joseph Cheriyan from Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, have found that low doses of an anti-inflammatory drug called aldesleukin, injected under the skin of patients after a heart attack, significantly reduces inflammation in arteries.

The researchers are currently following up patients to investigate the longer-term impact of this fall in inflammation. To date, in the two and a half years after their treatment, there have been no major adverse cardiac events in the group that received aldesleukin, compared to seven in the group that received the placebo.

Professor Ziad Mallat, BHF Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Cambridge who developed the trial, said: “We associate inflammation with healing – an inbuilt response that protects us from infection and injury. But it’s now clear that inflammation is a culprit in many cardiovascular conditions.

“Early signs from our ongoing trial suggest that people treated with aldesleukin may have better long-term outcomes, including fewer heart attacks. If these findings are repeated in a larger trial, we’re hopeful that aldesleukin could become part of routine care after a heart attack within five to 10 years.”

Aldesleukin is already used to treat kidney cancer, as high doses stimulate the immune system to attack cancer cells. The Cambridge team previously found that doses one thousand times lower than those used in cancer treatment increased the number of regulatory T cells – a type of anti-inflammatory white blood cell – in patients’ blood compared to a placebo.

In the current trial at Addenbrooke's and Royal Papworth hospitals in Cambridge, 60 patients admitted to hospital with a heart attack or unstable angina received either low dose aldesleukin or placebo. Patients received an injection once a day for the first five days, then once per week over the next seven weeks. Neither the participants nor their doctors knew whether they had received the drug or placebo.

At the end of treatment, Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans showed that inflammation in the artery involved in patients’ heart attack or angina was significantly lower in the group treated with aldesleukin, compared to those who received the placebo.

The anti-inflammatory effect of aldesleukin appeared even more striking in the most inflamed arteries, leading to a larger reduction in inflammation levels in these vessels and a bigger difference between the two groups by the end of the study.

Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation and consultant cardiologist said: “Thanks to research, we have an array of effective treatments to help people avoid heart attacks and strokes and save lives. But, even after successful heart attack treatment, unwanted inflammation in the coronary arteries can remain, which can lead to life-threatening complications.

“A treatment to reduce inflammation after a heart attack could be a game-changer. It would help doctors to interrupt the dangerous feedback loop that exacerbates inflammation and drives up risk. This research is an important step towards that treatment becoming a reality.”

The study was predominantly funded by the Medical Research Council, with significant support from the BHF and National Institute for Health and Care Research Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR-BRC).

Originally published by the British Heart Foundation. 

Repurposed cancer drug helps to calm inflammation in arteries.

Sebastian Kaulitzki/Science Photo Library via Getty ImagesIllustration of human heart

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Yes

The sight of vineyards in Britain is becoming more common as hotter summers create increasingly suitable conditions for growing grapes. But behind this success story is a sobering one: climate change is shifting the regions of the world suitable for growing crops.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have uncovered a looming issue: as the land suitable for producing our food moves northwards, it will put a squeeze on the land we need to grow trees.  The timber these trees produce is the basis of much of modern life – from paper and cardboard to furniture and buildings.

They say that the increasing competition between land for timber production and food production due to climate change has, until now, been overlooked – but is set to be an emerging issue as our demand for both continues to increase.

Under the worst-case scenario for climate change, where no action is taken to decarbonise society, the study found that over a quarter of existing forestry land – around 320 million hectares, equivalent to the size of India – will become more suitable for agriculture by the end of the century.

Most forests for timber production are currently located in the northern hemisphere in the US, Canada, China and Russia. The study found that 90% of all current forestry land that will become agriculturally productive by 2100 will be in these four countries.

In particular, tens of millions of hectares of timber-producing land across Russia will become newly suitable for agriculture – more than in the US, Canada and China put together – with conditions becoming favourable for potato, soy, and wheat farming.

“There’s only a finite area of suitable land on the planet where we can produce food and wood - two critical resources for society. As climate change worsens and agriculture is forced to expand northwards, there’s going to be increasing pressure on timber production,” said Dr Oscar Morton, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences who co-led the study.

“We’ve got to be thinking fifty years ahead because if we want timber in the future, we need to be planting it now. The trees that will be logged by the end of this century are already in the ground – they’re on much slower cycles than food crops,” said Dr Chris Bousfield, a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences and co-leader of the study.

Global food demand is projected to double by 2050 as the population grows and becomes more affluent. Global wood demand is also expected to double in the same timeframe, in large part because it is a low-carbon alternative to concrete and steel for construction.

Shifting timber production deeper into boreal or tropical forests are not viable options, because the trees in those regions have stood untouched for thousands of years and logging them would release huge amounts of carbon and threaten biodiversity.

“A major environmental risk of increasing competition for land between farming and forestry is that wood production moves into remaining areas of primary forest within the tropics or boreal zones. These are the epicentres of remaining global wilderness and untouched tropical forests are the most biodiverse places on Earth. Preventing further expansion is critical,” said David Edwards, Professor of Plant Ecology in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences and senior author of the study.

To get their results, the researchers took satellite data showing intensive forestry across the world and overlaid it with predictions of suitable agricultural land for the world’s key crops -including rice, wheat, maize, soy and potato - in the future under various climate change scenarios.

Even in the best-case scenario, where the world meets net zero targets, the researchers say there will still be significant future changes in the regions suitable for timber and crop production.

The study is published today in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Timber production contributes over US $1.5 trillion per year to national economies globally. Heatwaves and associated wildfires have caused huge recent losses of timber forests around the world. Climate change is also driving the spread of pests like the Bark Beetle, which attacks trees.

Climate change is expected to cause areas in the tropics to become too hot and inhospitable for growing food and make large areas of southern Europe much less suitable for food and wood production.

“Climate change is already causing challenges for timber production. Now on top of that, there will be this increased pressure from agriculture, creating a perfect storm of problems,” said Bousfield.

“Securing our future wood supply might not seem as pressing as securing the food we need to eat and survive. But wood is just as integrated within our daily lives and we need to develop strategies to ensure both food and wood security into the future,” said Morton.

Reference:
Bousfield, C.G., et al, ‘Climate change will exacerbate land conflict between agriculture and timber production.’ Nature Climate Change (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-024-02113-z

Climate change will move and reduce the land suitable for growing food and timber, putting the production of these two vital resources into direct competition, a new study has found.

Gianluca CerulloTimber/farming contrast in the USA

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Yes

An analysis of a short programme teaching empathy in schools has found it had a positive impact on students’ behaviour and increased their emotional literacy within 10 weeks.

The findings come from an evaluation of the “Empathy Programme”: a term-long course developed by the UK-based Empathy Studios. The research was conducted with support from academics at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.

Empathy Studios develops school-based, video-led programmes which aim to increase empathy in students aged five to 18. Students are shown thought-provoking films, then engage in approximately 30 minutes of activities and discussions about the issues raised. An annual flagship festival of films, resources & events, “Empathy Week”, is made available for free and has to date reached 1.3 million students worldwide.

Survey and interview data from 900 students and teachers at 10 participating schools in six countries, including the UK, revealed measurable, positive changes in students’ conduct, emotional awareness and curiosity about different cultures and the wider world.

Teachers rated students’ empathy, behaviour and other characteristics on a scale of one to 10 before the programme began, and five and 10 weeks later. The average empathy score rose from 5.55 to 7, while average behaviour scores increased from 6.52 to 7.89.

In follow-up interviews, one primary school teacher reflected: “I’ve definitely been able to resolve more issues within the classroom and not have parents called in.” A student told the interviewers: “I think that everyone in the class has become kinder.”

Empathy Studios defines empathy as: “The skill to understand others and the ability to create space for someone to reveal their authentic self while reserving judgement.” The company was founded four years ago by Ed Kirwan, a former science teacher from North London.

“The programme’s success lies in teaching students to celebrate difference, which changes their wellbeing and behaviour,” he said. “There’s never an excuse for poor behaviour, but often a reason, which greater mutual understanding can potentially  address.”

“I think the social unrest we have seen in Britain this summer shows how urgently we need more empathy across society. It won’t solve everything, but it is the foundation for solutions, and it starts with education. If the new government is serious about curriculum reforms that prepare young people for life and work, we must ensure that school equips them to understand, be curious about, and listen to each other, even in moments of disagreement.”

The evaluation was supported by Dr Helen Demetriou, a specialist in empathy education at the University of Cambridge, who helped to design the research, and to collect, quality assure and interpret the data.

“The findings show that a fairly simple, film-based programme can raise pupils’ empathy levels, enhancing their understanding of themselves, others, and global issues,” she said. “That supports a more complete learning experience, developing social and emotional skills that we know contribute to improved behaviour and more engaged learning.”

Although it is often considered innate, evidence suggests that empathy can be taught. A 2021 study co-authored by Demetriou successfully trialled teaching empathy during design and technology lessons. More recently, researchers at the University of Virginia found that empathy between parents and children is “paid forward” by the children to friends and, later, when they become parents themselves.

Empathy has been linked to better leadership and inclusion in workplaces; while a 2023 World Economic Forum White Paper highlighted the importance of socio-emotional skills to the future of work and argued for more education that emphasises interpersonal skills, including empathy.

Empathy Studios offers schools assembly and lesson plans built around films about the real-life stories of diverse people in other parts of the world. Its 2024/5 programme, for example, profiles five individuals from Mexico: including a Paralympian, a dancer, and a women’s rights activist.

Their framework focuses on three core concepts: “Empathy for Myself”, which develops students’ emotional literacy; “Empathy for Others”, which covers mutual understanding and interpersonal relations, and “Empathy in Action”, during which the students develop their own social action projects.

The new research builds on a 2022 pilot study with the University of Cambridge, which suggested that the programme makes students more responsive to each others’ feelings and improves self-esteem. The new evaluation involved over 900 students and 30 teachers, and took place during 2023.

The teacher surveys indicated that behaviour had improved by up to 10% in some schools, especially those new to empathy lessons. The average improvement in behaviour recorded by UK teachers corresponded to the overall trend, rising from 6.3/10 pre-programme to 7.7/10 post-programme. Empathy and behaviour also appeared to be closely linked: all schools reporting an overall improvement in student empathy also saw improvements in behaviour after five weeks, which was sustained in 80% of cases after 10.

The evaluation recorded small improvements in students’ overall emotional literacy and their “affective empathy”; or their ability to share the feelings of others. A change that emerged strongly from interviews with teachers was that the Empathy Programme appeared to increase students’ interest in other cultures. In one primary school, for example, the proportion of students responding positively to the statement “I want to find out more about the world” rose from 86% to 96% after 10 weeks. This echoes Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) evidence linking empathy to civic engagement.

Many students said they had learned valuable lessons from the programme. Their reflections included: “Everyone struggles… I’m not the only one who finds it hard”, and “Although we are all different, we all have so much in common”.

“Empathy is the number one human skill we need to develop for the future,” Kirwan said. “It should not just be an add-on; it should be considered foundational.”

Further information is available from: https://www.empathystudios.com/

A study involving 900 students in six countries found that a short programme of empathy lessons led to measurable, positive changes in their conduct, emotional awareness and curiosity about different cultures.

Empathy StudiosEmpathy lessons at Kingsmead School, Enfield, UK

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Yes

Plans for Cambridge Children’s Hospital can move ahead following the news that the Outline Business Case for the project has been signed off by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. The project has been given the green light to begin the detailed process of appointing a contractor, to build the ground-breaking new facility in 2026.

The ministerial backing means that the Project’s Outline Business Case, the second stage of the business case process, has now been fully approved by the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and HM Treasury. It was approved in principle in September 2023, subject to a capital affordability review by NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care’s Joint Investment Committee. That review took place in April 2024 and resulted in a recommendation to Ministers to endorse the decision.

In a show of further confidence in its plans, the Outline Business Case was signed off by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in August 2024. This approval recognises that the hospital will meet the needs of patients and staff across the East of England and that the project has the appropriate funding streams in place, to deliver the specialist children’s facility.

The hospital is being co-designed with the help of children, young people, families and healthcare professionals across the region to ensure the new hospital will meet the needs of patients, families and staff.

Dr Rob Heuschkel, Clinical Lead for Physical Health at Cambridge Children’s Hospital said:

“We are absolutely delighted that we can now move forward to enter contracts with a construction partner, so we can finally start to see work happening on site.

“A huge amount of work has gone into finalising the designs and getting us to this point, and I want to thank our healthcare staff, young people and their families from across the region who have been contributing valuable feedback and helping us shape our plans, right from the very start.

“The East of England is the only region in the UK without a specialist children’s hospital, and we look forward to changing that very soon.”

The approval comes as a programme of groundworks preparing for the build was completed in July, and new access roads have now been installed where the new five-storey, 35,000sqm hospital will be located, opposite the Rosie Maternity Hospital, on Robinson Way and Dame Mary Archer Way.

In the coming weeks, people will be able to see hoardings installed around the site of Cambridge Children’s Hospital, the first hospital truly designed to bring mental and physical health care together for children and young people.

Dr Isobel Heyman, Clinical Lead for Mental Health at Cambridge Children’s Hospital said:

“This really is fantastic news and an exciting moment in our journey to build a truly integrated children’s hospital for the East of England.

“The current model of mental health care is inadequate. Many children with physical ill-health also have significant mental health needs, and vice versa.

“Cambridge Children’s Hospital offers a solution. By delivering holistic care for children, young people, and their families, this not only reduces stigma, but the revolutionary model of care really does act as a blueprint for the NHS and the future of healthcare.”

The fundraising Campaign for Cambridge Children’s Hospital has now passed the halfway mark and the project remains on track to meet its £100m philanthropy target.

The hospital will also house a University of Cambridge research institute, focused on preventing childhood illness and early intervention across mental and physical healthcare.

Professor David Rowitch, Clinical Lead for Research at Cambridge Children’s Hospital said:

“By bringing clinicians and patients together with University of Cambridge investigators and industry partners, we aim to shift the medicine paradigm from traditional reactive approaches, to one based on early detection, precision intervention and disease prevention.

“Co-locating research efforts inside Cambridge Children’s Hospital will mean we can detect disease early or even prevent it altogether, personalise health care and prescribe treatments more appropriate for children and their individual health needs.

“We’ll also be able to foster collaborations to advance the power of advanced diagnostics, digital and telehealth technology to support healthcare professions from a distance, to deliver care closer to people’s homes, wherever they live in our region.”

The Cambridge Children’s Hospital project is a partnership between Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH), Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT), and the University of Cambridge.

Work now continues on the final stage of the business case for Cambridge Children’s Hospital – the Full Business Case.

Major milestone for first specialist children’s hospital in the East of England.

A montage of concept designs for Cambridge Children's Hospital Cambridge University Health PartnersArtist's impression of Cambridge Children's Hospital

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Yes

Researchers have compared the development of the fetal brain in mice whose mothers had no bacteria in their gut, to those whose mothers were given Bifidobacterium breve orally during pregnancy, but had no other bacteria in their gut.

Nutrient transport to the brain increased in fetuses of mothers given Bifidobacterium breve, and beneficial changes were also seen in other cell processes relating to growth.

Bifidobacterium breve is a ‘good bacteria’ that occurs naturally in our gut, and is available as a supplement in probiotic drinks and tablets.

Obesity or chronic stress can alter the gut microbiome of pregnant women, often resulting in fetal growth abnormalities. The babies of up to 10% of first-time mothers have low birth weight or fetal growth restriction. If a baby hasn't grown properly in the womb, there is an increased risk of conditions like cerebral palsy in infants and anxiety, depression, autism, and schizophrenia in later life.

These results suggest that improving fetal development - specifically fetal brain metabolism - by taking Bifidobacterium breve supplements while pregnant may support the development of a healthy baby.

The results are published today in the journal Molecular Metabolism.

“Our study suggests that by providing ‘good bacteria’ to the mother we could improve the growth and development of her baby while she’s pregnant,” said Dr Jorge Lopez-Tello, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Trophoblast Research, first author of the report.

He added: “This means future treatments for fetal growth restriction could potentially focus on altering the gut microbiome through probiotics, rather than offering pharmaceutical treatments - with the risk of side effects - to pregnant women.”

“The design of therapies for fetal growth restriction are focused on improving blood flow pathways in the mother, but our results suggest we’ve been thinking about this the wrong way - perhaps we should be more focused on improving maternal gut health,” said Professor Amanda Sferruzzi-Perri, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Trophoblast Research and senior author of the report, who is also a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge.

She added: “We know that good gut health - determined by the types of microbes in the gut - helps the body to absorb nutrients and protect against infections and diseases.”

The study was carried out in mice, which allowed the effects of Bifidobacterium breve to be assessed in a way that would not be possible in humans - the researchers could precisely control the genetics, other microorganisms and the environment of the mice. But they say the effects they measured are likely to be similar in humans.

They now plan further work to monitor the brain development of the offspring after birth, and to understand how Bifidobacterium breve interacts with the other gut bacteria present in natural situations.

Previous work by the same team found that treating pregnant mice with Bifidobacterium breve improves the structure and function of the placenta. This also enables a better supply of glucose and other nutrients to the developing fetus and improves fetal growth.

“Although further research is needed to understand how these effects translate to humans, this exciting discovery may pave the way for future clinical studies that explore the critical role of the maternal microbiome in supporting healthy brain development before birth,” said Professor Lindsay Hall at the University of Birmingham, who was also involved in the research.

While it is well known that the health of a pregnant mother is important for a healthy baby, the effect of her gut bacteria on the baby’s development has received little attention.

Reference 

Lopez-Tello, J., et al: ‘Maternal gut Bifidobacterium breve modifies fetal brain metabolism in germ-free mice.’ Molecular Metabolism, August 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.molmet.2024.102004

A study in mice has found that the bacteria Bifidobacterium breve in the mother’s gut during pregnancy supports healthy brain development in the fetus.

AsiaVision on Getty

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YesLicence type: Attribution-Noncommerical

The findings are published today in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology.

Global meat production has increased rapidly in recent decades and meat consumption exceeds dietary guidelines in many countries.  Earlier research indicated that higher intakes of processed meat and unprocessed red meat are associated with an elevated risk of type 2 diabetes, but the results have been variable and not conclusive.

Poultry such as chicken, turkey, or duck is often considered to be an alternative to processed meat or unprocessed red meat, but fewer studies have examined the association between poultry consumption and type 2 diabetes.

To determine the association between consumption of processed meat, unprocessed red meat and poultry and type 2 diabetes, a team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge used the global InterConnect project to analyse data from 31 study cohorts in 20 countries. Their extensive analysis took into account factors such as age, gender, health-related behaviours, energy intake and body mass index.

The researchers found that the habitual consumption of 50 grams of processed meat a day - equivalent to 2 slices of ham - is associated with a 15% higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the next 10 years. The consumption of 100 grams of unprocessed red meat a day - equivalent to a small steak - was associated with a 10% higher risk of type 2 diabetes.

Habitual consumption of 100 grams of poultry a day was associated with an 8% higher risk, but when further analyses were conducted to test the findings under different scenarios the association for poultry consumption became weaker, whereas the associations with type 2 diabetes for each of processed meat and unprocessed meat persisted.

Professor Nita Forouhi of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, and a senior author on the paper, said: “Our research provides the most comprehensive evidence to date of an association between eating processed meat and unprocessed red meat and a higher future risk of type 2 diabetes. It supports recommendations to limit the consumption of processed meat and unprocessed red meat to reduce type 2 diabetes cases in the population.

“While our findings provide more comprehensive evidence on the association between poultry consumption and type 2 diabetes than was previously available, the link remains uncertain and needs to be investigated further.”

InterConnect uses an approach that allows researchers to analyse individual participant data from diverse studies, rather than being limited to published results. This enabled the authors to include as many as 31 studies in this analysis, 18 of which had not previously published findings on the link between meat consumption and type 2 diabetes. By including this previously unpublished study data the authors considerably expanded the evidence base and reduced the potential for bias from the exclusion of existing research.

Lead author Dr Chunxiao Li, also of the MRC Epidemiology Unit, said: “Previous meta-analysis involved pooling together of already published results from studies on the link between meat consumption and type 2 diabetes, but our analysis examined data from individual participants in each study. This meant that we could harmonise the key data collected across studies, such as the meat intake information and the development of type 2 diabetes.

“Using harmonised data also meant we could more easily account for different factors, such as lifestyle or health behaviours, that may affect the association between meat consumption and diabetes.”

Professor Nick Wareham, Director of the MRC Epidemiology Unit, and a senior author on the paper said: “InterConnect enables us to study the risk factors for obesity and type 2 diabetes across populations in many different countries and continents around the world, helping to include populations that are under-represented in traditional meta-analyses.

“Most research studies on meat and type 2 diabetes have been conducted in USA and Europe, with some in East Asia. This research included additional studies from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia, and highlighted the need for investment in research in these regions and in Africa.”

InterConnect was initially funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 602068.

Reference
Li, C et al. Meat consumption and incident type 2 diabetes: a federated meta-analysis of 1·97 million adults with 100,000 incident cases from 31 cohorts in 20 countries. Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol.; 20 August 2024

Adapted form a press release from the MRC Epidemiology Unit

Meat consumption, particularly consumption of processed meat and unprocessed red meat, is associated with a higher type 2 diabetes risk, an analysis of data from almost two million participants has found.

Our research supports recommendations to limit the consumption of processed meat and unprocessed red meat to reduce type 2 diabetes cases in the populationNita ForouhiRichard BellFull English breakfast

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YesLicence type: Public Domain

The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Department of Archaeology and University of Cambridge Development & Alumni Relations are pleased to announce that the Arcadia charitable foundation has awarded grants totalling £10.3 million to continue the work of the Mapping Africa’s Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments (MAEASaM) project and the Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia (MAHSA) project.

Archaeological sites and monuments around the world are increasingly threatened by human activities and the impacts of climate change. These pressures are especially severe in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where local heritage agencies are often short-staffed and under-resourced; where existing sites and monuments registers are often incompletely digitised; and where many sites are not yet documented and large areas remain archaeologically under-studied. Alongside the intensity of natural and human threats, these factors combine to make the implementation of planning controls, impact assessments, mitigation measures and long-term monitoring especially challenging.

The five-year funding of £5.7 million to the MAEASaM project supports the continuation of its mission to identify and document endangered archaeological heritage sites across Africa, building on the work accomplished thus far with our in-country partners in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, the Sudan, Senegal, Mali, Kenya, Ethiopia and Botswana. The funding will also allow the project to expand its collaborations with other national heritage agencies in Africa, including Mozambique, Gambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and to develop innovative approaches to better integrate heritage concerns into national planning and development control activities

During Phase 1 of the project, the MAEASaM team managed to assess a total area of 1,024,656 km2 using a combination of historical maps, Google Earth and medium-resolution satellite imagery, resulting in digital documentation of some 67,748 sites and monuments. Concurrent with this work, the team created digital records of 31,461 legacy sites, from unique information sets spanning almost a century of archaeological fieldwork on the continent. The accuracy of a sample of these records were also assessed via 11 field verification campaigns, helping establish the current status of these sites and levels of endangerment from anthropogenic and natural processes, while also locating many previously undocumented sites. Training, skills enhancement and knowledge transfer activities were also delivered via both in-person and online events, often in collaboration with MAHSA, and team members presented their work at 15 international meetings and via numerous social media and website posts.

Professor Paul Lane, Principal Investigator of the MAEASaM project, said: “I am truly delighted by the news of this award and would like to take this opportunity to thank Arcadia for their continuing support. As well as allowing expansion of the project to cover other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, this further five years of funding will enable the creation of a repository of digital assets and a sustainable system for more rapidly and easily assessing, researching, monitoring and managing archaeological heritage, accessible to heritage professionals, researchers and students across the continent.”

Similarly, the five-year grant of £4.6 million to the MAHSA project supports its continuing mission to document endangered archaeological heritage in Pakistan and India, working alongside collaborators in both countries to support their efforts to protect and manage the rich heritage of the region. Over the next five years, MAHSA will continue to develop and populate its Arches database, creating a resource to make heritage data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. MAHSA will consolidate the work it has begun in the Indus River Basin and surrounding areas, and will also expand its documentation efforts to include the coastline areas of both India and Pakistan, Baluchistan in Pakistan and the Ganges River Basin in north India.

During Phase 1, the MAHSA team georeferenced in excess of 1,300 historic Survey of India map sheets, covering over 890,000 km2, and have reconstructed over 192,696 km2 of ancient hydrological networks. This groundwork has made it possible to digitise over 10000 legacy data records, and many of those records have been enriched. In addition, we have carried out five collaborative archaeological surveys both as part of our training programme, but also as part of new collaborative research with stakeholders in both India and Pakistan. We have engaged in policy-level dialogue with different government organisations in Pakistan and India, with an aim of working towards the development of a sustainable solution for the inclusion of heritage in urban and agricultural development strategies.  

Professor Cameron Petrie, Principal Investigator of the MAHSA project, said: “I am extremely proud of what the collaborative MAHSA team have achieved during Phase 1, and the support from Arcadia for Phase 2 will allow us to continue making a transformational contribution to the documentation and understanding of the archaeological heritage of Pakistan and India. We are clarifying existing archaeological site locations datasets and collecting new ones at a scale never before attempted in South Asia.”

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About Arcadia
Arcadia is a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge. Since 2002 Arcadia has awarded more than $1.2 billion to organisations around the world. https://www.arcadiafund.org.uk/  

About MAEASaM  https://maeasam.org/

About MAHSA  https://www.mahsa.arch.cam.ac.uk/

The charitable foundation awards £10.3 million for the continuation of two Cambridge projects mapping endangered archaeological heritage in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Image from the MAEASaM Project

The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Researchers have identified a drug already used for cancer patients, that, when applied to current gene therapy protocols can improve blood stem cell function threefold.

One trillion blood cells are produced every day in humans, and blood stem cells are the only cell types in our body capable of producing all blood cell types over our lifespan, giving them immense regenerative potential.

Blood stem cell gene therapy is a ground-breaking treatment that currently provides the only cure to more than ten life-debilitating genetic diseases and has already saved the lives of more than two million people with blood cancers and other diseases.

These therapies take blood stem cell samples from patients, where their genetic defect is corrected in a dish before being delivered back to the patient. However, limitations persist in blood stem cell therapies because of the shelf life of the cells outside the body. When removed from their environment in the human body and cultured in a dish, most blood stem cells lose their function. The exact timing and cause of this function loss has not previously been well understood.

Now, scientists in the Laurenti Group and others at the University of Cambridge’s Cambridge Stem Cell Institute (CSCI) and Department of Haematology have pinpointed a timeline for the blood stem cells under the current gene therapy protocols, which typically take place over three days. After the first 24 hours in a dish, more than 50% of the blood stem cells can no longer sustain life-long blood production, which is before therapy would even begin in a clinical setting.

During those first 24 hours, the cells activate a complex molecular stress response in order to adapt to the dish. By studying this stress response, the team identified a solution. Through repurposing a cancer growth blocker drug (Ruxolitinib), already in use for cancer treatments, they were able to improve stem cell function in a dish by three times its former capabilities.

The group is now aiming to modify current gene therapy protocols to include this drug, providing patients with the highest number of high-quality blood stem cells and improving their outcomes.

The study is published today in the journal Blood.

Professor Elisa Laurenti at the University of Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, and senior author of the study, said: “This is really exciting because we are now in a position where we can begin to understand the huge stress that these stem cells sense when they are manipulated outside of our body. Biologically it is really fascinating because it affects every aspect of their biology. Luckily, we were able to identify a key molecular pathway which governs many of these responses, and that can be targeted by a drug which is already in use and is safe to use.

“I hope our findings will enable safer treatments for gene therapy patients. Our discovery also opens up many possibilities to better expand blood stem cells ex vivo and expand the set of disease where we can use blood stem cells to improve patients’ lives.”

Dr Carys Johnson at the University of Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, and first author of the study, said: “Although we expected that removing these cells from the body and culturing them on a plastic surface would alter gene expression, the extent of change we found was surprising, with over 10,000 genes altered and a significant stress response detected. It was also striking to discover that the majority of blood stem cells are functionally lost during gene therapy protocols, before transplantation back to the patient.

“We have identified a key bottleneck where function is lost and clinical culture could be improved. I hope that our work will drive advancements in culture protocols to better harness the power of blood stem cells and improve the safety and efficacy of clinical approaches.”

Reference

C.S. Johnson, M.J. Williams, K. Sham, et al. ‘Adaptation to ex vivo culture reduces human hematopoietic stem cell activity independently of cell cycle.’ Blood 2024; DOI: 10.1182/blood.2023021426

Story written by Laura Puhl, Cambridge Stem Cell Institute.

Researchers have discovered a way to extend the shelf life of blood stem cells outside the body for use in gene therapy, providing patients with better options and improving their outcomes.

We were able to identify a key molecular pathway...that can be targeted by a drug which is already in use and is safe to use.Elisa LaurentiPhilippe Delavie from Pixabay

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YesLicence type: Attribution-Noncommerical

Severe brain injury can leave individuals unable to respond to commands physically, but in some cases they are still able to activate areas of the brain that would ordinarily play a role in movement. This phenomenon is known as ‘cognitive motor dissociation’.

To determine what proportion of patients in so-called ‘disorders of consciousness’ experience this phenomenon – and help inform clinical practice – researchers across Europe and North America recruited a total of 353 adults with disorders of consciousness, including the largest cohort of 100 patients studied at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Participants had mostly sustained brain injury from severe trauma, strokes or interrupted oxygen supply to the brain after heart attacks. Most were living in specialised long-term care facilities and a few were living at home with extensive care packages. The median time from injury for the whole group was about eight months.

Researchers assessed patterns of brain activation among these patients using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or electroencephalography (EEG). Subjects were asked to repeatedly imagine performing a motor activity (for example, “keep wiggling your toes”, “swinging your arm as if playing tennis”, “walking around your house from room to room”) for periods of 15 to 30 seconds separated by equal periods of rest. To be able to follow such instructions requires not only the understanding of and response to a simple spoken command, but also more complex thought processes including paying attention and remembering the command.

The results of the study are published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr Emmanuel Stamatakis from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge said: “When a patient has sustained a severe brain injury, there are very important, and often difficult, decisions to be made by doctors and family members about their care. It’s vitally important that we are able to understand the extent to which their cognitive processes are still functioning by utilising all available technology.” 

Among the 241 patients with a prolonged disorder of consciousness, who could not make any visible responses to bedside commands, one in four (25%) was able to perform cognitive tasks, producing the same patterns of brain activity recorded with EEG and/or fMRI that are seen in healthy subjects in response to the same instructions.

In the 112 patients who did demonstrate some motor responses to spoken commands at the bedside, 38% performed these complex cognitive tasks during fMRI or EEG. However, the majority of these patients (62%) did not demonstrate such brain activation. This counter-intuitive finding emphasises that the fMRI and EEG tasks require patients to have complex cognitive abilities such as short-term memory and sustained concentration, which are not required to the same extent for following bedside commands.

These findings are clinically very important for the assessment and management of the estimated 1,000 to 8,000 individuals in the UK in the vegetative state and 20,000 to 50,000 in a minimally conscious state. The detection of cognitive motor dissociation has been associated with more rapid recovery and better outcomes one year post injury, although the majority of such patients will remain significantly disabled, albeit with some making remarkable recoveries.

Dr Judith Allanson, Consultant in Neurorehabilitation, said: “A quarter of the patients who have been diagnosed as in a vegetative or minimally conscious state after detailed behavioural assessments by experienced clinicians, have been found to be able to imagine carrying out complex activities when specifically asked to, is sobering. This sobering fact suggests that some seemingly unconscious patients may be aware and possibly capable of significant participation in rehabilitation and communication with the support of appropriate technology.

“Just knowing that a patient has this ability to respond cognitively is a game changer in terms of the degree of engagement of caregivers and family members, referrals for specialist rehabilitation and best interest discussions about the continuation of life sustaining treatments.”

The researchers caution that care must be taken to ensure the findings are not misrepresented, pointing out, for example, that a negative fMRI/EEG result does not per se exclude cognitive motor dissociation as even some healthy volunteers do not show these responses.

Professor John Pickard, emeritus professorial Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, said: “Only positive results – in other words, where patients are able to perform complex cognitive processes – should be used to inform management of patients, which will require meticulous follow up involving specialist rehabilitation services.”

The team is calling for a network of research platforms to be established in the UK to enable multicentre studies to examine mechanisms of recovery, develop easier methods of assessment than task-based fMRI/EEG, and to design novel interventions to enhance recovery including drugs, brain stimulation and brain-computer interfaces.

The research reported here was primarily funded by the James S. McDonnell Foundation. The work in Cambridge was supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research UK, MRC, Smith’s Charity, Evelyn Trust, CLAHRC ARC fellowship and the Stephen Erskine Fellowship (Queens’ College). 

Reference
Bodien, YG et al. Cognitive Motor Dissociation in Disorders of Consciousness. NEJM; 14 Aug 2024; DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2400645

Adapted from a press release from Weill Cornell Medicine

Around one in four patients with severe brain injury who cannot move or speak – because they are in a prolonged coma, vegetative or minimally conscious state – is still able to perform complex mental tasks, a major international study has concluded in confirmation of much smaller previous studies.

When a patient has sustained a severe brain injury, there are very important, and often difficult, decisions to be made by doctors and family members about their careEmmanuel StamatakisWitthaya Prasongsin (Getty Images)Male patient in a hospital bed - stock imageAcknowledgements

The multidisciplinary Cambridge Impaired Consciousness Research Group, led by Emeritus Professors John Pickard (Neurosurgery) & David Menon (Anaesthesia) and Drs Judith Allanson & Emmanuel A. Stamatakis (Lead, Cognition and Consciousness Imaging Group), started its research programme in 1997, partly in response to emerging concern over the misdiagnosis of the vegetative state. This pioneering work has only been possible by having access to the world class resources of the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre, the NIHR/Wellcome Clinical Research Facility at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (Professors Barbara Wilson & Adrian Owen), the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability (Putney) and the Central England Rehabilitation Unit (Royal Leamington Spa).

The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes