Prototype vascular surgical device wins clinical innovation award

L-R, Mr. Gary Fingerhut; Dr. Cliona Murphy; Dr. Keith O’Neill.

Winning idealooks to make it safer to introduce devices into arteries through needlepuncture

A prototype device to enable “less traumatic introduction of large diameter therapeutic vascular devices” into the body has won this year’s ClevelandClinic and EnterpriseIreland clinical innovationaward.

The winning idea looks to make it safer to introduce devices into arteries through needle puncture during procedures such as aortic aneurysm repair and aortic valve replacement, said Dr Cliona Murphy, who accepted the award last week at the Medical Technology Industry Excellence Awards in Limerick.

A GP, Dr Murphy is taking part in the BioInnovateprogramme at NUIGalway, where she spent time observing surgical procedures and spotted a clinical need where an innovation could help.

“There has been a shift in the treatment of certain heart procedures from open surgery to the vascular approach, and one of these procedures is transcatheter aortic valve implantation,” she said.

“For this they require a large-diameter device to be inserted into the vessel to go to the heart, and the difficulty is that you need a large ‘introducer sheath’ that can result in complications. We have designed [a sheath] that reduces the axial force on the blood vessel, hopefully preventing complications.”

The team behind the idea will receive a grant of €15,000 and the opportunity to work with Cleveland Clinic and Enterprise Ireland to develop the device further.

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Recent online lectures in The Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection

Announcement: 

New Releases to The Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection:
Over 1,800 lectures by leading world experts

National University of Ireland - Galway has full access to all the lectures.
www.hstalks.com/access/  
On campus, you should be automatically authenticated.

Psychopharmacogenetics series, edited by Dr. Maria Arranz - Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London

1.    Influence of neurotransmitter receptor variants on interactions with Psychotropic Drugs

2.    Tailoring psychiatric treatment using genetic information: pharmacogenetic prediction of treatment response

Synapses, Neurotransmitters and Receptor Channels series, edited by Prof. Stuart Cull-Candy, University College London 

3.    Vesicular release of transmitter at active zones

Systems Biology series, edited by Prof. Hiroaki Kitano – Systems Biology Institute & Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc., Tokyo, Japan

4.    Interactome networks and human disease

Evolution and Medicine series, edited by Prof. Randolph Nesse – University of Michigan, USA

5.    The evolutionary web of life

Physiology and Pathophysiology of Neuroglia series, edited by Prof. Alexei Verkhratsky – University of Manchester, UK and Prof. Vladimir Parpura – University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA

6.    Cannabinoid type 1 receptors in Astrocytes

Parkinson's Disease series, edited by Prof. Ariel Deutch – Vanderbilt University, USA

7.    Mitochondrial and lysosomal dysfunction in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease

Signal Transduction via Protein Tyrosine Kinase Receptors series, edited by Prof. Carl-Henrik Heldin, Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research, Sweden

8.    The ERK1/2 MAPK cascade

Tuberculosis series, edited by Dr. Mario Raviglione and Dr. Paul Nunn, Stop TB Department, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland 

9.    Pharmacometrics in tuberculosis

Respiratory Infection series, edited by Prof. Stephen Gillespie – University of St. Andrews, UK

10.    Responding to pandemic influenza

Topical Talks series

11.    Immunosuppressive mechanisms in myeloid cells

12.    Pharmacometric approaches to optimize use of drugs and dialysis treatments in patients with chronic kidney disease

Epilepsy and Seizures series, edited by Prof. Steven Schachter – Harvard University Medical School

13.    Epilepsy

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Medical Council National Trainee Experience Survey:

BULLYING and undermining of trainee doctors in Ireland is endemic - and more than twice as bad as in the UK, a major report reveals.

Senior consultants are the biggest culprits, but the junior doctors also complain of bullying by patients and the public, the first nationwide survey of trainees by the Medical Council revealed.
It is worst in hospitals and is less of a problem in mental health services, while it happens least among junior medics training to be GPs.

Three-out-of-10 trainees reported being bullied and undermined. Interns who are fresh out of medical school suffer most, and the problem reduces among older trainees. View report here.

The findings come as Health Minister Leo Varadkar has pledged to improve the teaching and work environment for junior doctors in a bid to persuade more of them to stay in Irish hospitals.

Asked to comment on why so many senior specialists are accused of bullying, Freddie Wood, the president of the Medical Council said the environment in the health service is now "much more hostile than it was" for doctors.

He cited overcrowding, waiting lists as well as pressure to meet targets, litigation and patient expectations as adding to the stress."With the downturn in the economy many doctors are in negative equity and that all adds up to poor well-being. If you are a busy consultant surgeon and you have 40 patients to see, you will have only got to where you are through diligence and perfectionism. The people who get to that level are perfectionists and they demand the same as everybody else," said Mr Wood, a retired heart surgeon.

"Like a lot of things it needs to be talked about. This report gives us a definite basis to say to consultants that they need to be aware of it and do something about it."

Key weaknesses revealed by the report included:
* 30pc of trainees said they received no explanation of their role and responsibilities;
* Three-in-10 interns felt medical school did not prepare them for hospital training. This is two to three times higher than in the UK;
* Basics such as educational supervision and matching responsibility with the young doctor's competence were also found wanting. Concerns also emerged about the safety practices when one team of doctor hands over a patient to another;
* Interns and doctors on basic specialist training also reported the worst experiences of indication and orientation.

The report said the impact on patient safety cannot be overlooked and the training setting must be a better place to learn, work and care for patients.

Mr. Varadkar, who launched the report, talked about when he graduated as a doctor in 2003.
"My general impression as a trainee was very good, particularly in the GP training scheme I felt well supported by trainers."

However he said the same was not the case during his time as a hospital doctor.
View more here

Tackling Data Irreproducibility

Drug discoverers chart path, to tackling data irreproducibility:

Researchers from across the biomedical research community met in October to discuss solutions to the 'irreproducibility epidemic', which has been re-emphasized by new data from Novartis and Sigma-Aldrich.

One result that the scientific community has consistently reproduced in recent years is the finding that a vast body of biomedical research is irreproducible. Yet, while scientists at Bayer, Amgen, the ALS Therapy Development Institute and elsewhere have documented the 'irreproducibility epidemic', few organizations have come up with demonstrated solution.

So, in October, leading experts from universities, industry, the US government and journals gathered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, for the first major, multi-stakeholder symposium dedicated to tackling biomedical irreproducibility.

“For the first time people are coming together to talk about it,” says Sitta Sittampalam, a senior advisor at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH)'s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. “On the one hand, it's depressing to hear about all of this. But on the other, solutions are starting to crop up.”

Various nascent initiatives were discussed — and broadly welcomed — at the symposium. But these efforts aren't enough on their own to mitigate the problem, says Barbara Slusher, Director of the Brain Science Institute Drug Discovery Program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. “Right now there are no negative consequences to publishing something that's irreproducible,” she says. “The incentive programme in academia really needs to have some shifts.” A pharma veteran of 18 years, Slusher also directs the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium (ADDC), a non-profit network of more than 100 research centres worldwide (Nature Rev. Drug Discov. 12, 811–812; 2013).

Clinical Research Ireland

Clinical Research Ireland is a research consulting and site management organisation (SMO) that was founded to aid the translational, therapeutic, diagnostic and biotechnology research communities in the execution of clinical trials and the acquisition of biological specimens:

"Clinical Research Ireland has sites representing all of the major specialties spanning Primary Care through to Specialist Hospital Clinics. Initiation of one of our clinical sites begins with a site selection and qualification visit. All of our sites are experienced in pharmaceutical and diagnostic research and have on-site support and facilities designated for clinical research. Most importantly, our sites have large patient populations readily accessible to get quality samples in a timely fashion."

SEE: www.clinicalresearchireland.com