A new paper by Associate Professor John MacArtney and colleagues in the Primary Care and Community Network, Warwick Applied Health, takes an in-depth look at how different narratives of the pandemic affected hospice palliative care in the first two-years of Covid-19.

Warwick Medical School has hosted an event on palliative care, collaborating with NHS partners, building relationships and providing opportunities for discussion and networking.

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the most common cause of anovulatory infertility. Obesity exacerbates the reproductive complications of PCOS; however, the management of obesity in women with PCOS remains a large unmet clinical need. Observational studies have indicated that bariatric surgery could improve the rates of ovulatory cycles and prospects of fertility; however, the efficacy of surgery on ovulation rates has not yet been compared with behavioural modifications and medical therapy in a randomised trial. The aim of this study was to compare the safety and efficacy of bariatric surgery versus medical care on ovulation rates in women with PCOS, obesity, and oligomenorrhoea or amenorrhoea.
Read the paper hereLink opens in a new window.

Warwick Medical School's Master's in Public Health has been ranked 2nd in the UK and 10th globally in the Eduniversal Best Master's Ranking 2024.

Our Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Building, which we share with the School of Life Sciences, has been awarded the West Midlands Building of the Year award from the Royal Institute of British Architects.

In a collaboration between Soochow (China), Institut Pasteur (Shanghai), CDC (China), Liverpool, Georgia (US), and Warwick we investigated the host-specificity of S. enterica based on 362,931 publically accessible genomes in EnteroBase (a database of sequenced enteric bacteria genomes hosted and developed at Warwick). We detected the presence of nine populations that are enriched in pigs and observed frequent intercontinental transmission of genetically almost identical strains in these pig-enriched populations, which cannot be explained solely by natural causes. Therefore, we focused on one population enriched in pigs, serovar Choleraesuis, reconstructing the historical fluctuations in this population, accumulation of antimicrobial-resistant genes, and international transmissions. We revealed a 2-stage expansion in the population of this serovar, the first associated with the development of intensive pig farming in the early 20th century and the second due to the increased frequency of antimicrobial resistance after the 1960s. Additionally, we found that Europe and the USA contributed the most to international transmissions of this serovar.
Read the paper hereLink opens in a new window.
Read the press release here.Link opens in a new window

Professor Robert Cross, Warwick Medical School has been awarded the Biochemical Society Award for Sustained Excellence 2025.

The work and contribution of fifteen eminent bioscientists, outstanding educators and exceptional early career researchers has been acknowledged in the annual Biochemical Society Awards following a record year of nominations - Find out more and read the full article here

We are delighted to announce that Professor Kate Seers, Director of Warwick Research in Nursing, and Deputy Head of Warwick Applied Health (Research) at WMS has received a highly sought after NIHR Senior Investigator award

We were delighted to attend an event at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire last week for the official opening of their new clinical research facility.

Morphogen gradients provide essential positional information to gene networks through their spatially heterogeneous distribution, yet how they form is still hotly contested, with multiple models proposed for different systems. Here, we focus on the transcription factor Bicoid (Bcd), a morphogen that forms an exponential gradient across the anterior-posterior (AP) axis of the early Drosophila embryo. Using fluorescence correlation spectroscopy we find there are spatial differences in Bcd diffusivity along the AP axis, with Bcd diffusing more rapidly in the posterior. We establish that such spatially varying differences in Bcd dynamics are sufficient to explain how Bcd can have a steep exponential gradient in the anterior half of the embryo and yet still have an observable fraction of Bcd near the posterior pole. In the nucleus, we demonstrate that Bcd dynamics are impacted by binding to DNA. Addition of the Bcd homeodomain to eGFP::NLS qualitatively replicates the Bcd concentration profile, suggesting this domain regulates Bcd dynamics. Our results reveal how a long-range gradient can form while retaining a steep profile through much of its range. Read the paper here.

More and more evidence suggest that circadian clock disruption or misalignment is a feature of many diverse chronic diseases including metabolic syndrome, depression but also a number of cancers. For the latter, recent mechanistic studies in cancer models have established an understanding of how the circadian clock influences onset, progression and therapeutic outcomes. Moreover, it has been proposed that tumours might have disrupted circadian oscillators. In patients, however, this is more difficult to establish as usually only single samples, e.g., tumour biopsies, are available. Therefore, novel tools to measure the functional state of the molecular circadian clock are needed.

Here, we introduce TimeTeller, a machine learning tool that analyses the clock as a system and aims to estimate circadian clock function from a single sample’s transcriptome by modelling the multi-dimensional state of the clock. We demonstrate TimeTeller’s utility for analysing experimental in vitro and in vivo, as well as healthy human and patient samples from various platforms (microarray, RNA-Seq and NanoString) and highlight TimeTeller’s potential relevance for advancing circadian medicine. The project is an inter-disciplinary collaboration including significant work by Warwick’s MRCDTP students Laura Usselmann and Vadim Vasilyev and is setting the stage for further applications of TimeTeller in experimental models and human breast tumours.
Read the paper hereLink opens in a new window.

A new study led by our Clinical Trials Unit has found that an online rehabilitation programme improves quality of life for adults with long Covid.

New research supported by our Clinical Trials Unit has led to the UK government approving the use of digital pathology to help speed up analysis of cancer screening samples.

This work is based on the discovery of diurnal variations impacting cancer therapy. Especially, use of chronomodulated treatment with 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) has gained significance. Studies indicate high inter-individual variability in diurnal variations in dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase (DPD) activity – a key enzyme for 5-FU metabolism. However, the influence of individual chronotypes on chronomodulated therapy was unclear but is needed to optimize precision dosing of chronomodulated 5‑FU. Lead by the Thorsten Lehr's PKPD group at the University of Saarland, this collaborative paper is taking a treasure trove of patient 5-FU PK data amalgamated with DPD enzyme activity data from health people to establish a novel PKPD model of 5-FU that captures the extent of diurnal variations in DPD activity and can help investigate individualized chronomodulated 5-FU therapy through testing alternative personalized dosing strategies. Read the paper here.

WMS is leading two revolutionary trials that will compare the treatment benefits of traditional physiotherapy rehabilitation with transplanted knee surgeries.

Dr Imran Ahmed has been recognised with the Hunterian Professorship from the Royal College of Surgeons for his work at WMS on the treatment, experiences, and outcomes of patients with a meniscal tear of the knee.

A national research database led by the Clinical Trials Unit at WMS has revealed stark figures for cardiac arrests in England for 2022, with just 1 in 12 people surviving 30 days after an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

A new diagnostic device could help those who experience sleep apnoea get a quicker diagnosis and an improved quality of life, thanks to a trial being led by Warwick Medical School researchers.

Thousands of people with type 1 diabetes could be offered wearable technology to help them manage their condition thanks to guidance based on research conducted by WMS.

The world’s largest review on opioid medicines for cancer pain, which included WMS researchers, has found it is unclear whether some commonly used opioid medicines are better than a placebo and suggests that non-opioid medicines, including aspirin, may be as effective as opioids.

Mammography for some breast cancer survivors could be reduced, according to research led by Warwick Medical School’s Clinical Trials Unit.

A team at Warwick Medical School’s Clinical Trials Unit have won a prestigious award at the Clinical Research Network Awards, alongside colleagues from the West Midlands Ambulance Service.

Associate Professor Meera Unnikrishnan from the Division of Biomedical Sciences has been awarded a Wellcome Discovery Award from the Wellcome Trust to the value of £2,225,509. Her project, ‘Dissecting Clostridioides difficile-host-commensal interactions at the gut interface’, will take place over eight years.

Congratulations to Professor Ponnusamy Saravanan, who has been appointed as the next editor-in-chief of the Royal College of Physicians' oldest journal, Clinical Medicine.

Work by recent WMS PhD graduate Agnieszka Nagorska and PDRA Andreas Zaucker shows that translational control of an enzyme, FurinA, is important for normal positioning of the heart, and for cardiac valve function. FurinA cleaves the growth factor signal and morphogen, Nodal. Mutant zebrafish embryos with mis-regulated furina show premature and increased levels of FurinA, ectopic Nodal signalling, and defects in heart positioning and valve development. This is similar to human patients with mitral valve regurgitation. The findings pave the way for potential diagnostic tests for patients with heart valve dysfunctions. The work was supported by grants from the Leverhulme Trust, UKRI-BBSRC, MLSRF, and doctoral studentships from Warwick Medical School, MRC DTP, and Warwick-ARAP.
Read the paper hereLink opens in a new window.