Here’s a load of fresh news and announcements from across Imperial.
From an analysis of the benefits of intensive blood pressure control in elderly patients to a new method of treating cancers with immunotherapy, here is some quick-read news from across the College.
Analysis of blood pressure treatment
Although studies have shown that intensive blood pressure control has clinical benefits in elderly hypertensive patients, there are also significant harmful effects associated with such treatment, such as fainting and falling.
An analysis of six large randomized controlled trials by researchers including Imperial’s Dr. Victoria Cornelius showed that intensive treatment of high blood pressure could benefit older people (≥60 years) who have a long life expectancy. life (> 3 years), but this may not be the case. suitable for those who are not expected to live less than a year.
The results could be used by clinicians to better weigh the individual benefits for their patients against the potential risks of such treatment.
Dr Cornelius, lead author of the study, from Imperial’s Clinical Trials Unit, said: “This important research helps us answer the question of whether to prescribe intensive pressure control. blood pressure in the elderly.
“This shows us that patients with less than a year of life expectancy may have a limited chance of receiving clinical benefit.”
Read more about the study in JAMA internal medicine.
Zirconium for electrodes
Resistive Switched Memory (ReRAM) is a data storage system that can read, write, and retain data without external power by changing the state of the resistor. Niloufar Raeis-Hosseini from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering investigated the use of zirconium (Zr) for the next generation of non-volatile nanoelectronics like ReRAM. Inspired by natural memory, they emulated some basic functionality of the human brain in the form of artificial synapses using impulse patterns. The research was carried out in collaboration with Ilia Valov at Juelich Research Center in Germany.
The work could have immediate technical implications since the researchers’ methods can be used for many other functional nanoelectronic devices, such as energy conversion/storage devices, sensors and memristors with applications in neuromorphic computing.
Read more about the study in RSC advances.
Masked immunotherapy
Proteins called interleukins are used as part of immunotherapy to treat certain cancers – however, immunotherapies can have serious side effects due to the way they interact with the immune system. Now, Dr. Jun Ishihara from the Department of Bioengineering and his team have used protein engineering to ‘mask’ interleukins so they can successfully ‘hide’ from the immune system in mice. These masks can be removed once they reach the tumor.
They found that the therapy eradicated certain cancers in mice without detectable side effects and, if translated into the clinic, the protein engineering approach could help advance cancer immunotherapy.
Read more about the study in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
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Conrad Duncan
Communications Division
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