Top honour for medical researchers elected Fellows of Academy of Medical Sciences

Outstanding contribution of Imperial professors recognised with major honours - News

The outstanding contribution made by three Imperial researchers to medical science has been recognised with election to the Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences, it was announced today.

Professors Anne Dell, Jon Friedland and Terry Cook join 37 other distinguished academics and clinicians from across the UK who will be formally admitted to the Academy at a ceremony in June. The new elections bring the total number of Imperial Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences to 72.

Professor Dell is based in the College’s Department of Life Sciences. She joined Imperial in 1975, after completing her PhD at Cambridge. During her time at the College she has been appointed to many senior positions, including heading the Department of Biochemistry, and holding a prestigious BBSRC professorial fellowship 2001–2007.

Professor Anne Dell

Professor Dell’s research focuses on a sugar-rich layer called the glycocalyx that coats every cell in the human body. These sugars play an important, but not yet fully understood, role in cell-to-cell communication and recognition. They are central to important biological questions such as why a foetus is not detected and rejected as ‘foreign’ by a mother’s body, and how a parasite manages to hoodwink its host’s immune system.

Professor Dell’s laboratory specialises in the development and exploitation of highly sensitive mass spectrometric screening and sequencing techniques for characterising these sugars and the proteins they interact with in the body.

On hearing the news of her Fellowship, Professor Dell said: “I am delighted and honoured to be elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences. I am enormously indebted to the great team of scientists in the biopolymer mass spectrometry research group at Imperial without whom none of my research would have been possible. I am looking forward to participating in the activities of the Academy and helping to champion the emerging field of medical glycobiology.”

Professor Terry Cook from the College’s Division of Investigative Science is an expert on inflammatory diseases of the kidney. He studied medicine at St Mary’s in the 1970s, and has been a professor of renal pathology at Imperial since 2001.

His research focuses in particular on glomerulonephritis, a disease that is one of the primary causes of kidney failure, in which small blood vessels in the kidney become inflamed. He is working on identifying genetic factors that predispose people to this kind of inflammation, and developing internationally agreed systems for classifying inflammation of these blood vessels in kidney biopsies.

Professor Terry Cook

Commenting on his election to the Fellowship, Professor Cook said: “I feel extremely honoured to be joining such an eminent group. I am very enthusiastic about contributing to the objective of the Academy to encourage the pursuit of internationally competitive medical science and the translation of that knowledge from the laboratory bench to the delivery of healthcare, which is what I hope I have tried to do in my career.”

The third new Imperial researcher to be elected to the Academy is Professor Jon Friedland, a tuberculosis expert, who is Head of the College’s Department of Infectious Diseases and Immunity, as well as President of the British Infection Society.

Professor Friedland’s work focuses on the body’s immune response to TB. In particular, his research involves studying the role of destructive enzymes called matrix metalloproteinases in overcoming the body’s defences against the disease. In addition, Professor Friedland is working on developing novel diagnostic tools for identifying TB in patients. His work was recognised with the 2005 Weber-Parkes Prize awarded by the Royal College of Physicians for outstanding research into tuberculosis.

Professor Jonathan Friedland

Commenting on being elected to the Academy, Professor Friedland said: “I am absolutely delighted and honoured to be elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences, which has a deserved reputation for academic excellence and desire to improve healthcare and training. I look forward to becoming an active member.”

Fellows are elected to the Academy for their exceptional contribution to the advancement of medical science either in the form of original discovery or of sustained contributions to scholarship, or for the application of existing scientific knowledge or understanding in an innovative way, in order to bring about advances in human health and welfare.

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