Royal Society

Wolfson Research Merit Awards

These awards are worth ?10,000-?30,000 a year, which is a salary enhancement

• Award winner: Adrian Podoleanu
• Institution: 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Kent

Tuneable lasers for optical coherence tomography and their translation

• Award winner: Jonathan Lloyd
• Institution: 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Manchester

Unlocking the biotechnological potential of the subsurface

• Award winner: Benjamin Willcox
• Institution: 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Birmingham

Understanding and exploiting immune recognition of cellular stress

51¹ú²úÊÓƵ

• Award winner: David Stephenson
• Institution: 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Exeter

Stochastic modelling for improving understanding of storm risk

National Institute for Health Research

Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation Programme

• Award winner: Rebeccah Slater
• Institution: 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Oxford
• Value: ?722,731

A blinded randomised controlled trial investigating the efficacy of morphine analgesia for procedural pain in infants

51¹ú²úÊÓƵ

Public Health Research Programme

• Award winner: Michelle McKinley
• Institution: Queen¡¯s 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ Belfast
• Value: ?505,751

A woman-centred, tailored SMS-delivered multi-component intervention for weight loss and maintenance of weight loss in the postpartum period: intervention adaptation and pilot RCT

Health Technology Assessment Programme

• Award winner: Sarah Stock
• Institution: 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Edinburgh
• Value: ?719,821

QUIDS: quantitative fibronectin to help decision-making in women with symptoms of preterm labour

Medical Research Council

Research grants

• Award winner: Michele Bombardieri
• Institution: Queen Mary 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of London
• Value: ?214,841

MICA: Investigating the pathogenic role of T follicular helper cells and their therapeutic targeting in primary Sj?gren¡¯s syndrome

• Award winner: Susan Francis
• Institution: 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Nottingham
• Value: ?556,942

Human mechanosensation: from first-order neurone to somatosensory cortex

51¹ú²úÊÓƵ

• Award winner: Kevin Fox
• Institution: Cardiff 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ
• Value: ?1,110,920

Optogenetic dissection of homeostatic and Hebbian components of cortical plasticity

In detail

Award winner: Matthew Wood
Institution: 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Oxford
Value: ?1,008,110

Exosome-based gene therapy for Huntington¡¯s disease

Despite being comparatively rare, this neurodegenerative disease nevertheless affects one in 10,000 people in the UK. Huntington¡¯s disease puts a huge burden on patients and their families, and there is currently no cure. This is largely because of the inability of therapeutic compounds to cross the blood-brain barrier and enter affected parts of the brain at levels sufficient for clinical benefit. While therapeutic compounds are being developed to treat Huntington¡¯s disease, their delivery into the brain is the major hindrance to their becoming treatments that could be widely used. Over 36 months, the team will develop a new treatment, which can switch off the mutant Huntingtin gene, and cross the blood-brain barrier to enter the brain using small, natural particles called exosomes. This will open the door to testing compounds that have been proven to reduce the levels of the Huntingtin gene. If successful, the method could be used to treat many other currently incurable neurodegenerative diseases.

51¹ú²úÊÓƵ