Patients reaping rewards from TCD breakthroughs
There are 180 clinician researchers and scientists working together at the institute in research teams that are strategically focusing on the key areas of infection and immunity, cancer and neurosciences.
The report, launched in Dublin yesterday by Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe, documents five years of research.
Doctors from St James’s Hospital in Dublin and a number of other leading teaching hospitals throughout the country are working with the scientists at the institute in translating top class bioscientific research into improved patient health care.
The research facility, dedicated to research into the molecular basis of human disease, allows a laboratory to patient approach to medicine.
“It is important that we make the outcomes of leading-edge research, not only in molecular science, but across all disciplines, accessible for all, not just to those involved in research,” said Mr O’Keeffe.
One research team led by TCD senior lecturer in molecular medicine Dr Ross McManus, recently discovered seven gene regions linked to the cause of the coeliac condition and it is hoped that it will lead to the development of treatments.
TCD senior scientist at the institute, Dr Padraic Fallon, and his group have been looking at how the absence of work infections in developed countries may predispose people to allergies.
The team’s research identifies new mechanisms of immunity by parasitic works to prevent disease with the aim of developing new potential treatments for allergic diseases.
TCD senior lecturers in molecular medicine, Dr Aideen Long and Dr Yuri Volkov’s recently discovered how hepatitis C escapes immune defences using state-of-the-art equipment.
And in the area of neurosciences, TCD professor of medical molecular genetics Peter Humphries, is focusing on the prevention of blindness by gene therapy.
Research by TCD professor of experimental haematology, Mark Lawler, in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute in the US, has demonstrated a link between DNA repair genes and the development of multiple myeloma, the second most common cancer of the blood.
