Academy of Medical Sciences Success

They join a fellowship of the world's most eminent experts.
The distinguished individuals are:
Professor David Ron, Professor of Cellular Pathophysiology and Clinical Biochemistry, University of Cambridge.
David Ron is a physician-scientist studying the mechanisms by which cells adapt to the burden of unfolded proteins in the secretory pathway. He is distinguished for having identified key components of the signalling pathway that enables cells to match the quantity of proteins they produce to the cellular capacity to fold nascent proteins and for his role in defining the consequences of breakdown of this regulatory process. His work has contributed to our emerging understanding of the links between protein misfolding and diseases of aging and the importance of protein folding homeostasis to health.
Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, Professor of Developmental and Stem Cell Biology and Wellcome Senior Research Fellow at Gurdon Institute and Physiology, Development and Neuroscience Department, University of Cambridge.
Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz has made key contributions to the field of early mammalian development. She developed the use of GFP as a gene expression and lineage tracer in the mouse embryo that, together with other novel labelling and time-lapse imaging techniques, allowed her to generate a dynamic atlas of cell fate in the early mouse embryo. She was also first to use RNAi technology in mammalian cells to determine genes directing cell fate. These studies opened a question of whether all cells in the embryo are truly identical and “blank-slates” awaiting instructions — the accepted dogma at the time. Magdalena’s research revealed that already at the early embryonic stages cells carry epigenetic information that biases fate - knowledge that has opened a new field of research and helped to understand the first major developmental switches. Her recent work has identified that the pattern of cytoplasmic movements, triggered by fertilization, allows a prediction of embryo viability. Most recently she has established a system for culturing and imaging development outside the mother’s body beyond implantation, offering potential for addressing how body begins to form and the expansion of the embryo‘s natural stem cells is controlled.
Professor Jane Clarke, Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in Basic Biomedical Science and Professor of Molecular Biophysics, University of Cambridge.
Jane Clarke is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in Basic Biomedical Sciences and Professor of Molecular Biophysics in the Chemistry Department of the University of Cambridge.  Her research is multidisciplinary, combining single molecule and ensemble biophysical techniques with protein engineering and simulations to investigate protein folding.  She studies the folding of families of homologous proteins to address many of the fundamental questions on how proteins fold, and of evolution of folding landscapes.  She is also interested in more complex problems, including how mechanical proteins have evolved to resist unfolding when subject to mechanical force; how multidomain proteins avoid misfolding; and, recently, folding upon binding of intrinsically disordered proteins.
Professor I. Sadaf Farooqi, Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in Clinical Science and Professor of Metabolism and Medicine, University of Cambridge
Professor Sadaf Farooqi is a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow in Clinical Science and Professor of Metabolism and Medicine.  She played a leading role in the identification of one of the first genetic causes of obesity, demonstrating that mutations in the adipocyte-derived hormone leptin could lead to severe hyperphagia and childhood onset obesity.  She went on to show that this disorder was entirely treatable with recombinant human leptin, providing proof of principle for leptin's effects on appetite, weight and the onset of puberty in humans.  With colleagues, she showed that mutations in the melanocortin 4 receptor, a leptin target, represented the commonest genetic form of obesity, a finding that has influenced clinical guidelines for the assessment of obese patients.  She has made a key contribution to the finding of several additional genes involved in the regulation of appetite and weight, leading to the recognition that severe obesity has a neurobehavioural basis.
Dr David Jayne, Consultant in Nephrology and Vasculitis, Cambridge University Hospitals
David Jayne is an NHS consultant in nephrology and Director of the Vasculitis and Lupus unit at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge.  He has co-ordinated a sequence of international clinical trials that have established the standard of care for the management of vasculitis and directs a clinical research group in Cambridge evaluating biologic and other newer therapies in vasculitis, systemic lupus erythematosus and Behcet’s disease.  He is the first President of the European Vasculitis Society. 
Professor Peter McNaughton, Sheild Professor and Head of Dept of Pharmacology, University of Cambridge
Peter McNaughton is a leading figure in the field of sensory physiology and pharmacology, addressing the molecular processes by which sensory stimuli are converted into a nerve signal in sensory receptors.  His recent work has been on the sensation of pain, and in particular on why pain gets worse following either inflammation or direct injury to nerves (neuropathic pain).  In a striking recent discovery he showed that HCN2, an ion channel belonging to the HCN family (better known in the context of the cardiac pacemaker) is a crucial player in both inflammatory and neuropathic pain. He has now initiated a major drug discovery project to exploit the identification of HCN2 as a novel analgesic target.
Professor Ketan Patel, Group leader and member of scientific staff at MRC LMB, Cambridge
     
K.J Patel is a principal investigator at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), he is also affiliated to the University Dept of Medicine.  His work has shed fundamental insight into how toxins released from metabolism damage the DNA of stem cells particularly in those that produce blood. Studies carried out by his laboratory have uncovered how the body protects against these toxic metabolites through a dual protection mechanism involving degradation of this metabolite and a specific form of DNA repair. A coincidence of these discoveries has been to elucidate how the toxic by product of alcohol metabolism – a chemical call acetaldehyde, damages DNA and may contribute to diseases associated with ethanol abuse (fetal alcohol syndrome and certain cancers).
K.J Patel is a principal investigator at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), he is also affiliated to the University Dept of Medicine.  His work has shed fundamental insight into how toxins released from metabolism damage the DNA of stem cells particularly in those that produce blood. Studies carried out by his laboratory have uncovered how the body protects against these toxic metabolites through a dual protection mechanism involving degradation of this metabolite and a specific form of DNA repair. A coincidence of these discoveries has been to elucidate how the toxic by product of alcohol metabolism – a chemical call acetaldehyde, damages DNA and may contribute to diseases associated with ethanol abuse (fetal alcohol syndrome and certain cancers).