Research interests

Grant Support

Staff Members

Contact details

Teaching

Job Vacancies

Publications

Conference presentations

British Microcirculation Society

Team Meetings

Lab talk rota

Bristol Heart Institute

School of Physiology & Pharmacology

Welcome to the MVRL homepage.

We are delighted to announce we will host the 2013 British Association for Cancer Research Meeting on Tumour Microenvironment - Basic science to novel therapies -  from July 3rd-4th 2013, featuring:

Doug Hanahan (Lausanne) Gosse Adema (Nijmegen)  Bronek Pytowski (Imclone) Helge Wiig (Bergen) Jacqueline Shields (Cambridge) Holger Gerhardt (London/Leuven) Francis Balkwill (London) Michael Olson (Glasgow) Gordon Jayson (Manchester)

Kari Alitalo (Helsinki) Elise Kohn (NCI, NIH) Stefan Schulte Merker (Utrecht), Kairbairn Hodivala Dilke (London) Eyad Elkord (Salford) Claire Lewis (Sheffield) Steve Wedge (Astra Zeneca) Chris Schofield (Oxford) Steven Harper (Bristol)

Principal Investigators

David Bates Professor of Microvascular Biology and Medicine Scientific Director, MVRL, School of Physiology and Pharmacology. email: Dave.Bates@bris.ac.uk

Steve Harper Honorary Professor in Physiology and Pharmacology Clinical Director, MVRL, Consultant Nephrologist, Academic Renal Unit, Southmead Hospital. Email: S.Harper@bris.ac.uk

Dr Andy Salmon MRC Clinician Scientist, Clinical Senior Lecturer/Consultant in Nephrology, (Academic Renal Unit) and Physiology and Pharmacology Andy.Salmon@bristol.ac.uk

Dr Chris Neal Honorary Research Fellow, School of Physiology and Pharmacology Chris.Neal@bris.ac.uk

Thank you for your interest in the MVRL.

Research Interests

Angiogenesis Our angiogenesis research focuses on: 1. The biology of the anti-angigoenic splice variants of VEGF we disovered in 2002 2. Therapeutic angiogenesis and arteriolargenesis, particularly with respect to the formation of physiologically normal vasculature.	Vascular permeability We are investigating how microvessels control fluid and solute movement from blood to tissue, the role of the endothelial surface layer, the junctional proteins and the endothelial signalling mechanisms,and how this is altered in diseases such as pre-eclampsia, Dengue fever and cancer.	Renal mirocirculation End stage renal failure often results from damage to the filtering units of the kidney, the glomerulus. We are investigating how the structure and function of the glomerular barrier is controlled by the surrounding cells, the podocytes, as well as the lining cells, the endothelial cells in health and disease.
Ophthalmology Our discovery that VEGF isoforms are altered in eye disease, and the concept that blocking blood vessel growth has led us to develop tools that can modify angiogenesis and prevent cells in the eye from dying. We are developing new drugs to treat Age Related Macular Degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and other eye conditions.	Neuronal protection Vascular growth factors also act on the nervous system both directly by changing blood vessels that supply nerves, and directly by acting on VEGF receptors on neurons. The discovery that VEGFs can protect neurons from cell death has lead us to ivnestigate how this might occur, and its effect on differnt neuronal types.	Tumour metastasis Many cancers kill due to spread from their point of origin (e.g. skin, breast) to other organs (e.g. brain, lung). We have identified novel moelcular mechanisms by which tumour cells can escape their environment and find their way to lymph nodes and then to distant organs. We are trying to develop inhibitors of these as novel cancer therapies.

Microvascular Biology and Medicine.

Postdoctoral Research Assistants and Associates	Postgraduate Students	Technicians, PhD students and Clinical Fellows
Dr Yan Qiu Cancer Research UK Postdoctoral Research Associate, from China Yan.Qiu@bris.ac.uk	Silvia Lanati. Wellcome Trust Funded PhD student. From Italy. Principal Supervisor Dave Bates	Amy Russell.  MRC technician and PhD student. From Scotland
Dr Maryam Hamdollah- Zadeh Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Research Associate, from Iran	Nick Beazley Long Wellcome Trust FundedPhD student. (jointly supervised by Dr Lucy Donaldson)	Megan Stevens.  MRC technician and PhD student.
Dr Sebastian Oltean BHF Postdoctoral Research Associate. From Romania	Jim Carter. NERC funded PhD student. (Jointly supervised by Amanda Churchill)	Dr Shaney Barratt Wellcome Trust Clinical Training Fellow (working jointly with Dr Ann Millar)
Dr Kenton Arkill BHF Postdoctoral Research Assistant (workign jointly with Prof John Squires,  Prof Charles Michel, and Dr Carlo Knupp)	Mel Gammons. Skin Cancer Research Fund and Fight for Sight funded PhD student
Dr Georgina Cope Wellcome Trust Funded Postdoctoral Research Assistant (working jointly with Dr Simon Satchell and Dr Gavin Welsh, School of Clinical Sciences Academic Renal Unit, Southmead Hospital)	Athina Mavrou. Prostate Reseacrh Campaign funded PhD Student. From Cyprus.
Dr Richard Hulse. Diabetes UK funded Postdoctoral Researcher (Working jointly with Dr Lucy Donaldson).	Kai Betteridge MRC funded PhD Student
Dr Karen Brakspear. MRC Funded postdoctoral Researcher	Nikita Ved. Diabetes UK PhD student (Joint with Professor James Bainbridge, UCL)
	Xi Ye. British Heart Foundation PhD Student. (Joint with Dr Amanda Churchill, Ophthalmology)
	Jenny Castle Miller. BBSRC PhD Student (joint with Dr Domingo Tortonese, Anatomy)

Support

Wellcome Trust	British Heart Foundation	Medical Research Council	Diabetes UK	The Richard Bright VEGF Research Trust,	Cancer Research UK
Skin Cancer Research Fund	National Kidney Research Foundation	Prostate Research Campaign

Fight for Sight	Association for International Cancer Research,	Royal College of Surgeons	The Healing Foundation	Bupa Foundation

Contact Details

Teaching links

Microvascular Lab

 Available positions

We curently have a postdoc postion and a technician.

Recent publications
Including papers in press

 Details of abstracts and posters presented at recent meetings by members of the lab.

The British Microcirculation Society

The BMS home page, with details of conferences, abstracts, a whole load of microcirc. journals, and a lot more.

Links

The Microcirculation Society

Link to the Microcirculatory Society in the United States

Other Vascular Biology links

Link to the home page of the NAVBO, Physsoc, APS and others

Previous students and postdocs staff

Dr Leslie Sage was awarded her PhD in October 2011 and is moving to Atlanta, Georgia	Kirsty Symonds is working as a laboratory officer at Truro Hospital.	Robert Muston gained his MSc in 2011. He is retired.
Dr Wei Kang Wu is now working as a postdoc in the Dept of Ophthalmology in Bristol	Vadim Alexeenko has returned to Russia	Dr Maria Peiris Pages is a postdoc at Cornell University, New York City.
Dr Gopinath Damodaran is now a Barts and London charitable Trust Research Fellow at the Centre for cutaneous research, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Blizard Institute of Cell and Molecular Science, in London.	Dr Elianna Amin is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Rayne Institute, King's College London (ex PhD student)	Dr Coralie Hoareau-Aveilla is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Toulouse
Dr Emma Rennel is working as a Field Application Specialist for Gyros AG	Dr Oliver Stone is at the University of California, San Francisco working with Didier Stainer on angigoenesis in zebrafish (ex PhD student)	Dr Joanne Ferguson will be studying Medicine in Bristol from October 2011.
Dr Jeanette Woolard is a Lecturer in Cardiovascular Pharmacology at the University of Nottingham	Maxine Emmett is now working as a a postdoc with Rowan Pritchard-Jones in Liverpool (ex PhD student)	Dr Cathy Glass went to University of California at Davis for her Postdoctoral Research, gaining a Regenerative Medicine fellowship. (ex PhD student)
Dr Jing Hua is now a research fellow with Dr  Reza Dana,at the Schepens Eye Institute in Boston after completing her postdoc work with Professor Lois E.H. Smith at Harvard Medical School, Children's Hospital.	Mr Darryl Dunn is completing his plastic surgery training in Oxford	Dr Dawid Nowak completed an MSc in Bioscience Enterprise at Cambridge University, and then moved to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories as a postdoctoral researcher (ex PhD student)
Mr Alex Varey was a Clinical Research Fellow/RCS Surgical Registrar and Hunterian Professor of Surgery for 2007-8. He is now working as a specialist registrar in plastic surgery in the South West.	Dr Anette Magnussen went to work as a postdoctoral Researcher at University College London Cancer Institute.	Arjun Krishnakur is now undertaking a PhD at the Queen's University,Belfast having completed his MSc with us.
Ms  Liz Waine was a Urology Registrar/Visiting Clinical Research Fellow. She completed her MD and is now working as a Specialist Registrar in Surgical Urology.	Dr Andy Benest took a position as a junior team leader with Hellmut Augustin's laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Leeds Institute for Molecular Medicine Tumour Angiogenesis Signal Transduction and Cancer Group . (ex PhD student)	Dr Heather Bevan took a postdoctoral research associate position at the Academic Renal Unit at Southmead Hospital working with Dr Simon Satchell, and recently emigrated to Australia. (ex PhD student)
Mr Rowan Pritchard- Jones was the 2005-6 Hunterian professor of Surgery and is now Consultant/Senior Lecturer in Liverpool	Dr Olga Konopatskaya is currently working as a postdoctoral research associate with Dr Alastair Poole in Pharmacology in Bristol	Dr Hongwei Cheng is working jointly with Jules Hancox in the CRL and Clive Orchard in the Department of Physiology
Tris Pocock is now a teaching fellow in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester	Dr Rachel Perrin undertook postdoctoral research at the University of California Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, California, with Prof Sarah Yuan, and is now International Development Officer for the Meningitis Research Foundation (ex PhD student)	Dr Becky Foster took a postdoctoral research associate position in Bristol. She is now a BHF Intermediate Fellowship running her own group at Southmead Hospital. (ex PhD student)
Dr Kavita Joory undertook a medical degree at the University of Birmingham, graduating in 2009 and is now a senior house officer in the West Midlands (ex PhD student)	Dr Jacqui Shields took a postdoctoral research scientist poition in Melody Swartzs laboratory in Lausanne (ex PhD student), and is now a Senior Scientist running her own group at the MRC Cancer Unit in Cambridge.	Dr Wenying Wang is currently working as a research scientist for Novobiotech in Beijing (ex PhD student)
Dr Andrew (Tai-Gen) Cui is now Professor of Nephrology at the Institute of Nephrology in Beijing	Cheryl Whittles is working in the Department of Biochemistry	Nicky Hillman (Now Nicky Cook) teaches biology in Leicester

Dr Bates' personal links

Links to pages I think are interesting, including skiing, wine and football links

Department Page

The views expressed in this document are those of the document owner.