World-class medical researchers sought in Professorial recruitment drive at Imperial College London

30 new Professors to be recruited over the next three years - News Release

Imperial College London News Release
For immediate release
Thursday 31 January 2008

Imperial College London will recruit 30 new world-class Professors to its Faculty of Medicine over the next three years in a major recruitment drive announced today, with an investment of over £4M a year aimed at bringing fresh talent into healthcare research.

The drive underlines Imperial's commitment to improving healthcare through research in both the basic and clinical sciences and demonstrates the advantages that the new relationship between universities and the NHS can bring to improving patient care. It comes as the NHS celebrates its 60th birthday.

The new recruitment forms part of the research strategy for the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, the UK's first Academic Health Science Centre, which was created in 2007 to integrate health services with research and teaching. The new Professors will work in the Faculty of Medicine and in the new Trust, which is now the largest in the UK.

Full-page adverts announcing the first 10 posts are being placed from today in the international scientific and clinical journals Nature, Science, The Lancet and The British Medical Journal.

The first wave of chairs will be in areas where the College has or seeks to have a world class position, which include Cardiovascular Science and Renal Medicine; Diabetes and Obesity; Musculo-Skeletal Disorders; Genetics and Genomics; and Translational Medicine (see Case Study and Notes to Editors for further details).

Subsequent appointments will be made in areas including Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology, Public Health and Primary Care.

Professor Steve Smith, Principal of the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London and Chief Executive of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said:

"There has never been a more exciting time for people to join Imperial, as our new Academic Health Science Centre is changing the environment for medical research. The new Professors we are seeking will help to reinvigorate the NHS on its 60th birthday, bringing the dividend from advances in research to patients much quicker than before."

The new Professors will join a team of 858 researchers, 197 of whom are Professors, making Imperial College's Faculty of Medicine one of the biggest in Europe with over £130M of research funding.

CASE STUDY

In Cardiovascular Science, two new Professors will boost teams looking at how to correct heart diseases such as heart attacks and heart failure using the body's own mechanisms. Heart and circulatory disease is the UK's biggest killer.

When a person has a heart attack, as much as 50 per cent of heart muscle can be suddenly wiped out, as the lack of blood flow to the heart starves it of oxygen. The heart can also suffer cumulative damage during heart disease when muscle cells die sporadically over a long period of time.

Imperial researchers are analysing which proteins either convey death signals to the heart muscle cells or execute these death signals. They hope they will ultimately be able to develop drugs which target these death signals, or switch on protective proteins in the heart. This would restore the heart's ability to continue pumping vigorously.

In other studies, researchers seek to enhance the mechanical performance of diseased muscle cells, using a gene therapy strategy to rescue sick cells' ability to pump calcium ions. This approved gene therapy is already underway.

Researchers at the College are also focusing on how to regenerate heart muscle cells, either by using embryonic stem cells or by using very rare progenitor cells in the adult heart. In animal models, these progenitor cells are able to regenerate heart muscle cells and weave themselves almost seamlessly into the architecture of heart tissue. They are better able to turn into new heart muscle than cells from the bone marrow or other adult sources.

Bone marrow stem cells may be useful for heart repair through their beneficial effects on blood vessel formation, blood flow, and wound healing in the damaged heart, according to pioneering trials in Europe and the US. Current research at Imperial is directed at innovative technologies to improve which bone marrow cells are used, and how they are delivered to the sites of damage in the heart.

Professor Michael Schneider, Head of Cardiovascular Science from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London, said: "These kinds of 'bench to bedside' studies are innately complex and pose demanding challenges. The new Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust organisation makes it much more straightforward than before to align the planning of facilities, the hiring of clinical investigators, and the momentum of transforming new knowledge into new modes of care."

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For further information please contact:

Laura Gallagher
Press Officer
Imperial College London
e-mail: l.gallagher@imperial.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)207 594 6702 or ext. 46702
Out of hours duty Press Officer: +44 (0)7803 886 248

Notes to editors:

1. Researchers interested in finding out more about the new positions should Maria Monteiro, Senior Appointments Coordinator (Professors and Readers on m.monteiro@imperial.ac.uk. The job advertisement can be viewed at www.imperial.ac.uk/employment

2. The opening phase of recruitment will be in the following Strategic Research Themes:

Cardiovascular Science and Renal Medicine
* 2 Chairs in Cardiac Surgery and Developmental Dynamics
* 1 Clinical Chair in Renal Medicine

Endocrine, Metabolism and Diabetes
* 1 Non Clinical Chair in Diabetes Research

Imaging/Rheumatology
* 1 Clinical Chair in Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Imaging

Genetics and Genomic Medicine
* 1 Chair in Human Genetics

Translational Medicine
* 1 Chair in Haematology with an interest in haemopoietic stem cells
* 1 Clinical Chair in Experimental Medicine
* 1 Chair in Medical Statistics with an interest in clinical trial methodology
* 1 Clinical Chair in Fetal Medicine

3. About Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust

* Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust and St Mary's NHS Trust in partnership with Imperial College London merged on 1 October 2007 to become Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, the UK's first Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC).

* The Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust comprises Charing Cross, Hammersmith Hospital, Queen Charlotte's & Chelsea, St Mary's and Western Eye hospitals and it is the largest Trust in the country.

* The AHSC format is already established in other parts of the world, most notably Johns Hopkins in the USA, where it has been shown to deliver substantial improvements in clinical care. Johns Hopkins has been rated the US's top hospital for the past 17 years running by US News & World Report's annual hospital rankings.

4. About Imperial College London

Imperial College London - rated the world’s fifth best university in the 2007 Times Higher Education Supplement University Rankings - is a science-based institution with a reputation for excellence in teaching and research that attracts 12,000 students and 6,000 staff of the highest international quality. Innovative research at the College explores the interface between science, medicine, engineering and business, delivering practical solutions that improve quality of life and the environment - underpinned by a dynamic enterprise culture. Website: www.imperial.ac.uk