University of Edinburgh
Partner description
Edinburgh Medical School has a vision to understand humans in health and disease and improve lives nationally and across the globe. Our ethos is to encourage work in an interdisciplinary manner across traditional research boundaries and in scale from molecules to populations.
Our research is aligned within 7 major themes: Cancer, Genetics, Global Health, Health Data and Informatics, Regeneration and Repair, Cardiometabolic Disease and Reproductive Health.
Our long-term strategy anticipated the current drive to co-locate clinical and basic science groups with state-of-the-art infrastructure and facilities that enable ‘close to the patient’ data-rich research.
Relevant FEMaLers and their relevant output
Andrew Horne
Bio:
Professor Andrew Horne is co-Director of the EXPPECT Centre in Edinburgh, UK. EXPPECT brings together individuals involved in the clinical care of women with pelvic pain and endometriosis with discovery scientists to form a hub within which innovative approaches to pelvic pain treatment can be developed in collaboration with commercial partners.
Professor Horne’s most recent studies have shown that peritoneal mesothelial cells from women with endometriosis have an altered metabolic phenotype, similar to cancer cells (PNAS 2019, Cell 2019). This finding has underpinned a body of work which has demonstrated that it is possible to treat women with endometriosis with a drug that has previously been tested in cancer and led to exploratory clinical trials in women.
Relevant publications:
Horne AW, Saunders PTK. Endometriosis. Cell 179(7) 1677-1677e1.
Horne AW, Ahmad SF, Carter R, Simitsidellis I, Greaves E, Hogg C, Morton NM, Saunders PTK. Repurposing dichloroacetate for the treatment of women with endometriosis. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2019 116(51):25389-25391.
Kvaskoff M, Horne AW, Missmer SA. Informing women with endometriosis about ovarian cancer risk. Lancet 2017 390(10111):2433-2434.
Saraswat L, Ayansina D, Cooper KG, Bhattacharya S, Horne AW, Bhattacharya S. Impact of endometriosis on risk of further gynaecological surgery and cancer: a national cohort study. BJOG 2018 125(1):64-72.
Horne AW, Saunders PTK, Abokhrais IM, Hogg L; Endometriosis Priority Setting Partnership Steering Group. Top ten endometriosis research priorities in the UK and Ireland. Lancet 2017 389(10085):2191-2192.
Philippa Saunders
Bio:
Professor Philippa Saunders is a biomedical scientist and Professor of Reproductive Steroids at the University of Edinburgh where she is co-Director of the EXPPECT (Excellence in Pelvic Pain and Endometrosis Care and Treatment) Centre which brings together discovery scientists and clinicians conducting research to improve therapies for endometriosis.
She has published more than 260 papers with major contributions to our understanding of the impact of sex steroids on reproductive and other systems: her current H index on Scopus is 70, i10 Google scholar 213.
Relevant publications:
Horne AW, Saunders PTK. Endometriosis. Cell 179(7) 1677-1677e1.
Horne AW, Ahmad SF, Carter R, Simitsidellis I, Greaves E, Hogg C, Morton NM, Saunders PTK. Repurposing dichloroacetate for the treatment of women with endometriosis. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2019 116(51):25389-25391.
Horne AW, Saunders PTK, Abokhrais IM, Hogg L; Endometriosis Priority Setting Partnership Steering Group. Top ten endometriosis research priorities in the UK and Ireland. Lancet 2017 389(10085):2191-2192.