KHP Centre for Translational Medicine: first Fellowships awarded

Five recipients of the KHP Centre for Translational Medicine postdoctoral Clinical Research Excellence Fellowships (CREF) have been announced.

The fellowships, supported through King’s Clinical Academic Training Office (KCATO), include a pharmacist and four doctors with projects areas including hypertension, cancer, fetal imaging, women and children’s health, and inflammatory diseases.

The successful recipients and their research programmes are:

• Dr Alice Beardmore-Gray - Improving immediate maternal mortality and longer term kidney/cardiovascular health outcomes following pregnancy complications in LMIC, thus impacting on one of the biggest global health disparities.
• Dr Thomas Day - Optimising the collaborative performance of the sonographer-AI team to improve detection of fetal heart disease on ultrasound.
• Dr Tasanee Braithwaite - A neuro-ophthalmologist developing tools to predict inflammatory eye diseases and in doing create early and precise treatments. 
• Dr Jennifer O’Sullivan - Harnessing splicing-specific neoantigens for immunotherapy in myeloid malignancies.
• Dr Ryan McNally - A pharmacist exploring a personalised-medicine approach to managing hypertension - the ‘silent killer’. 

Prof Michael Malim, Chair of the KHP Centre for Translational Medicine Management Executive, said:

Congratulations to our five successful fellows – we are delighted to draw upon the expertise across the partnership and support these excellent initiatives to help us understand new and emerging approaches to healthcare.

Prof Claire Harrison, Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS FT, said:

We are thrilled to see the breadth and diversity of applications for the Centre for Translational Medicine funding calls to date. Our ambition is that via research we will improve outcomes for patients and bring research to life for our communities. We look forward to exciting data from the work of these fellows and the centre in the future. 

The Centre for Translational Medicine brings together the organisations of King’s Health Partners and generous funding from the Guy's and St Thomas' Charity to work in partnership to improve the health of people locally, nationally, and globally, accelerating targeted, sustainable and more equitable health outcomes for patients and communities across south east London and beyond.

Patient representatives and clinical academics across all four partners have been involved at every stage of decision-making on funding awards.

The pre-doctoral CREF scheme is open for applications, with more than 100 supervisors listed in the supervisory pool and interviews scheduled for June. 

Find out more about the KHP Centre for Translational Medicine.