QMUL awarded major grant for wound-healing research

Queen Mary have been awarded a major grant from the UK’s leading medical charity in animal replacement research, the Dr. Hadwen Trust.

The grant is for research into healing chronic wounds, such as diabetic ulcers, a major healthcare concern in the UK. Dr. John Connelly, Senior Lecturer in Bioengineering at QMUL, will be receiving the grant of £117, 823. This will fund a two-year research programme which will use human cells instead of animal cells to investigate wound-healing, and improve the testing of drugs and therapeutics.

Dr. Connelly, who is based at the Centre for Cutaneous Research within the Blizard Institute at QMUL, said:

“We are so grateful to the Dr. Hadwen Trust. The results of our research, we believe, will provide new and important insights into human-relevant woundhealing.”

Dr. Brett Cochrane, Group Head of Science at the DHT, added: “We are delighted for Dr. Connelly and his team. It is an absolute joy when we can fund a project as full of merit and promise as the wound-healing research at the Blizard Institute.”

The Blizard Institute at QMUL has been a pioneer in the development of in vitro models as an alternative to animal research, using human cells and tissues and, in particular, the development of three-dimensional models.

In January 2013 Queen Mary and the Dr. Hadwen Trust announced a joint collaboration, which saw the creation of the world’s first Professorial Chair dedicated to animal replacement science, based within the Blizard Institute in Whitechapel.