UCL School of Life and Medical Sciences

A mechanism that cells use to group together and move around the body – called 'chase and run' - has been described for the first time by scientists at UCL.

Scientists at UCL have developed new technology which reveals that blood pressure measured close to the heart is much higher during sleep than previously thought. Night time blood pressure is a strong predictor of both heart disease and stroke, with previous studies establishing that blood pressure measured over the arm falls at night during sleep. However these new data indicate that the night-time decline in blood pressure may be less extensive than previously thought.

UCL has been awarded £11.1 million from the UK Research Partnership Investment Fund (UKRPIF) towards the cost of the new UCL Institute for Immunity and Transplantation at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead.

Sir Paul Nurse, Director of the Francis Crick Institute, unveiled the organisation’s strategy today at a ceremony attended by senior government ministers and heads of the institute's founding partners, including UCL's President & Provost Professor Malcolm Grant.

An avatar system that enables people with schizophrenia to control the voice of their hallucinations is being developed by researchers at UCL with support from the Wellcome Trust.

Millions of people in London and the south east will see improvements to their healthcare following the decision by NHS England to designate UCLPartners as an Academic Health Science Network (AHSN).

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Women’s groups can dramatically reduce the number of maternal and newborn deaths in some of the world’s poorest communities, according to a new meta-analysis published in The Lancet.

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Men experience a higher burden of disease and lower life expectancy than women, but policies focusing on the health needs of men are notably absent from the strategies of global health organisations, according to a Viewpoint article in this week’s Lancet.

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and blood tests to establish the cause of death in fetuses and newborn babies is virtually as accurate as a standard autopsy, according to a paper published in The Lancet.

The Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL has been voted the winner of the inaugural Culture Pros Pick at the Museums + Heritage Awards – the Oscars of the museum world – at the awards ceremony last night.

People with job stress and an unhealthy lifestyle are at higher risk of coronary artery disease than people who have job stress but lead healthy lifestyles, according to work published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) by researchers from UCL's Department of Epidemiology and Public Health.

An international team led by researchers at the UCL Institute of Neurology has identified a set of tests that could help identify whether - and how - Huntington’s disease (HD) is progressing in groups of people who are not yet showing symptoms.

The behaviour of seabirds during migration – including patterns of foraging, rest and flight – has been revealed in new detail using novel computational analyses and tracking technologies.

What sounds make up London’s global university? UCL Communications has announced the winners of its ‘Sounds of UCL’ competition, which invited staff and students to capture ambient audio clips that reflect the life of UCL.

The European Commission needs to make some key innovations in its science funding programme if Europe is to enjoy the full benefits of the €70 billion to be spent on science research as part of the Horizon 2020 programme kicking off in 2014, according to an academic paper published by SAGE in the Journal of Health Services Research & Policy today.

Scientists have discovered how bacteria transport the tiny hair-like strands, called pili, which cover their outer surface from the inside of the cell, where they are assembled, to the exterior. Pili are a key target for a new generation of antibiotics, as without them the bacteria are unable to group together and to stick to human cells causing infection.

For the first time, teams that care for children needing heart surgery have been able to review their short-term success rate better across all the different operations they perform.

Joanna Brunker, a PhD student in the UCL Department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering, struck Gold at a competition in the House of Commons, for the excellence of her Biology research, walking away with a £3,000 prize yesterday.

On Saturday 16th March 2013, over 300 individuals took to the paths of Regent's Park running either 5km or 10km in aid of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).

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UCL and the University of Oxford have come together to form CASMI - the Centre for the Advancement of Sustainable Medical Innovation.

A dedicated team of intensive care doctors, nurses and scientists are taking more than 200 people to the Himalayas to study how our bodies respond to low levels of oxygen.

UCL guidelines on open access and a publishing guide are available to UCL researchers.

The RCUK Policy on Open Access introduces, with effect from 1 April 2013, new open access requirements for research papers funded by the Research Councils.

A new mobile app developed by UCL scientists at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging will enable the team to carry out on an unprecedented scale experiments that previously could only be conducted on small groups of volunteers in the lab.

Bowel cancer cells missing one of three genes can rapidly reshuffle their genetic ‘pack of cards’ – the chromosomes that hold the cell’s genetic information. This reshuffling has been previously shown to render tumours more resistant to treatment.