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Grants:

A number of large grants have recently been awarded to members including:

• April 2012 We have secured a £4.5 million pound grant from the NIHR for a Respiratory Biomedical Research Unit (BRU). The overall aim of the Leicester Respiratory BRU is to promote the development of new and effective therapies for the treatment of severe asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

• March 2011 Professor Chris Brightling is leading a UK wide MRC initiative in the field of COPD worth £7million which also involves Dr Mick Steiner.

• February 2011 AirProm a FP7 EU grant worth £16 million euros with Professor Chris Brightling as PI focusing on new imaging modalities in airway disease.

New Appointments:

Professor Dean Fennell has been recruited to Leicester and joined us on 1st February 2012. Dean is a leading lung cancer specialist - a medical oncologist and CR-UK Clinical Scientist Fellow currently based at Queen's University Belfast. Dean will be a member of the Department of Cancer Studies and Molecular Medicine but will have a lab based in the Hodgkin Building. He will also have close interactions with the respiratory and lung cancer teams at Glenfield as well as the Commercial Trials Unit at the LRI. He will be spearheading our lung cancer initiative and working closely with the MRC Toxicology Unit in developing their Mesothelioma programme.

Dr Salman Siddiqui, Senior Lecturer/Honorary Respiratory Consultant, joined us on 1st February 2012. Salman's insterests involve studying structure and function of the large and small airways in asthma using non invasive diagnostics, modelling airways disease using computational and biostatistical models, studying the biology of small airway fibrosis.

Previous Events:

• January 2012 The seminar “Skeletal muscle dysfunction in COPD” was held on 18th January. Internationally known speakers spoke to a full capacity audience, with delegates travelling from as far afield as the USA, Sweden, and Denmark. The importance of the area was clearly demonstrated with long discussion following the talks as well as an entertaining pro/con debate. Early results from a MRC grant conducted at Leicester and Nottingham led by Dr Steiner and Prof Greenhaff provided particularly novel and interesting data.