Anti-Waffle Podcast

Sudax Murdan Associate Professor of Pharmacy, carries out innovative research into how we can better and more conveniently administer vaccines and medicines. In this episode she discusses her ideas for vaccine designs that would protect new babies from the common Strep-B infection as they are born, specifically relevant in remote regions where the normal westernised medical procedure of giving antibiotics to the mother during birth, cannot happen, usually because no medical professional is present. Instead she hopes to design an effective oral vaccine that can be taken by the mother alone. We also hear about the apparently neglected field of research in fungal nail infections. Dr Murdan has laid the ground in her research to develop new methods for medicines to be administered to treat fungal nail infections, for example, through commonly used products like nail varnish, lacquers and UV gels.

In this episode we hear about research, past and present, of Professor Andrew Hayward and Dr Al Story, who've spent much of their careers looking into the pathways of a disease, often perceived to be a one of migration and, at least in the UK, a disease of the past. In fact, London is leading in Europe with a disease that is really one of poverty and exclusion, and much of it is home grown. Here they discuss some of their findings; the link of TB prevalence to crack cocaine use, to poverty, access and availability of services - the social determinants of TB. And they talk about the development and purpose of their Collaborative Centre for Inclusion Health; a research centre based on a long history, initially focusing on infectious diseases and how we control them in socially excluded groups, then looking into the broader health needs of these excluded groups with complex needs and circumstances. Listen to hear how the evidence they're generating is allowing for NHS 'Find and Treat' services to go into hostels, day treatment centres and prisons, taking diagnostics, to where the cases are and finding treatment plans that work for the individual.

The hidden 1 billion. Despite being 15% of the world’s population; where one in every four households in the world has a person with a significant enough disability for it to make a difference to their everyday life, people with disabilities often remain marginalised, invisible, and the last in line when it comes to international development or global health or human rights efforts. But things are changing - with some help from Professor Nora Groce and colleagues at the Disability Research Centre at UCL. In this episode we hear about efforts to include disability in the Sustainable Development Goals, and about Nora’s part in the development of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The question is; ‘what is the everyday experience for people living with a disability in their local environment? And what could be achieved if instead of expecting people with a disability to adapt to the world as it is, we considered how we can adapt the things we do, to be inclusive for people with disabilities?’

In this concise and intriguing podcast, we’re introduced to emerging technologies in biomedical research that offer alternative methods, and which promote the 3Rs of animal testing: Replace, Reduce, Refine. Recent Post Grad Dr Chris Smith talks about his experiments in 3D Organotypic Modelling (manufacturing human tissue) – of both skin and gum tissue, testing their differences in wound healing. We learn about what his findings could mean for improving surgery and other wound recovery times, and hear about other technological developments, such as the Organ-on-a-chip that ‘looks like the future’ of biomedical experimentation.

Nathan Woodling tells us about his work on understanding Alzheimers and the discoveries around glial cells (the non-neuronal cells of the nervous system) rather than neuron cells that change the most as we age. His team are going through a list of hundreds of genes aiming to pinpoint the exact genes that change and cause Alzheimers.