Join Professor Joseph Boyle, Professor of Chemical Systems Pathology, to discover how white blood cells can help repair and protect our blood vessels and reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Please register to attend in person. A live stream link for online attendance will be available here shortly.Â
We look forward to seeing you on Wednesday 30 September!
³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Inaugurals are term-time lectures that celebrate our newest Professors, recognising their academic journey and showcasing their research.
Abstract
Most heart attacks and strokes are caused by a single process. This affects the vessels to the heart and the brain and comprises fatty deposits. Crucially these fatty deposits are not inert but trigger 2 opposed processes involving white blood defence cells. In one of these, white blood defence cells eat up fatty deposits and recycle the fat back to the liver – cleaning and repairing the vessel. In the opposite, the white blood defence cells are triggered as if there was an infection and damage the vessel leading to the vessel blockage leading to heart attack or stroke.
Our work over several decades has sought to increase the reparative, recycling and restorative activity of the most abundant white blood defence cells over their damaging activity. It has largely focussed on normal and drug-mediated control of some of the most important reparative genes and mechanisms. The work has led to new insights into the normal integrated regulation of genes involved in dealing with tissue haemorrhage. The work has been brought through into co-invention of a new class of light-emitting chemicals to detect activity of the most important recycling and protective enzymes involved. This work is now showing promise in patients.
Biography
Joseph Boyle is a Professor of Chemical Systems Pathology at ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ whose research studies mechanisms of heart attack and stroke in an attempt to understand their root causes to predict and prevent them. In his inaugural lecture he will discuss motivations and importance of the work. He will outline the broad insights it affords into white blood cells and the way they co-ordinately turn genes on to change their cellular functions. He will outline the exciting new pathway towards predicting and preventing heart attack, stroke and other vessel diseases.
I was raised in Glasgow Scotland and inspired by the ill-health that I saw and by school Chemistry teaching. I did both Medicine (joint second in year) and Pharmacology (First plus Prizes) locally at the University of Glasgow. This allows a first-rate grounding in chemistry, and close contact with world-leading pharmacologists. I trained in histopathology (FRCPath), the analysis of disease in tissues, mainly at Cambridge. I did a PhD in vascular inflammation pharmacology at Cambridge and then moved to ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ. My work has been generously funded by MRC at Cambridge and by BHF at ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ.
