Plastic Surgery Research Manchester - PhD Students

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Mr Duncan Ayers

BPharm(Hons.) MRPharmS MSc

Background: Pharmacist

Undergraduate University: University of Malta

Previous postgraduate work / experiences: In 2005 I graduated from the University of Manchester with a Master’s degree in Immunology & Immunogenetics. I have worked in Philip Day’ as research group during my Master’s project, and am now pursuing a PhD under his supervision. My main interest in this project is the possible utilization of microarray technology for perfecting RNAi therapy and drug development in neuroblastoma. I have also been appointed as honorary visiting lecturer in pharmacogenetics at the Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology at the University of Malta.

Mr Husam Bella

MBBS MRCS

Background: Aesthetic Research Fellow, The healing foundation

Previous postgraduate work / experiences: I studied medicine in Sind Medical College and Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) in Karachi, Pakistan. I then proceeded to complete my medical internship in AlKhobar, Saudi Arabia at the King Fahad University Hospital. Following that I was a resident in General and Plastic Surgery at the tertiary referral centre of the eastern province of Saudi Arabia; Dammam Central Hospital. In my pursuit of a career in Plastic Surgery, I came to the UK in 2001 where I completed my Basic Surgical Training (BST) in the Northwest of England and worked at the departments of Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery at Booth Hall Children’s Hospital, Wythenshawe Hospital of the University in Manchester; and the Southwest of England at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol. I am currently doing a PhD under the supervision of Dr Bayat. My project is aimed at identifying susceptibility genes to Keloid scarring. In October 2006, I was awarded the Aesthetic Research Fellowship by the Healing Foundation at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. The fellowship has enabled me to pursue fulfil my ambition in doing a higher degree and in this important and worthwhile subject area.

This is an international study looking at keloid families in Africa where keloid disease is endemic. Pedigrees will be established with a view to determine the heritability of keloid disease. Genetic samples from these patients will be analysed in Manchester at the Centre for Integrated Genomic Medical Research (CIGMR) and the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre.

Mr Farzad Javad

BSc, MSc Undergraduate University: King’s Collage London Previous postgraduate work / experiences: I finished my BSc in Immunology at King’s Collage London and started my MSc in Immunogenetics in Manchester. As part of my MSc, I was supervised by Dr Bayat and Dr Day for period of five months and I have been lucky to continue this for my PhD. My research in keloid scars involves gene expression, and cell cycle regulation.

Miss Melissa Mariani

MSc Master’s Thesis- March- August 2006, ‘Host- Parasite Interactions: The Trichiuris muris mouse model’ BSc Thesis- Jan- March 2005, ‘The Production of Monoclonal Antibodies To Mouse Anti-Müllerian Hormone’ Originally from United States, I carried out my Immunology and Immunogenetics MSc research under Dr. Kathryn J. Else at University of Manchester which began in the fall of 2005. Following the completion of my MSc in the fall of 2006, I began PhD research at the Institute for Analytical Sciences (ISAS) in Dortmund, Germany and the Manchester Interdisciplinary Bioncentre at the University of Manchester under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Philip J. Day and Dr. Ardeshir Bayat. While at ISAS, my research is focused on the analysis of heterogeneous keloid tissues. Despite being of heterogeneous lineage, gene expression has been found to vary significantly resulting in a variety of inconsistent expression levels. As a result, the genetic variances between individual keloid and non-keloid derived cells will be investigated. This study will be carried out through the utilization of a variety of techniques, including quantitative- PCR.

Miss Samrina Rehman

MSc(2005) and MChem (2004) in Cheminformatics and Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry from The University of Manchester. Previous postgraduate work / experiences: Industrial work experiences include Inpharmatica Ltd (a drug discovery company) and Advanced Interconnection Technology (manufacturer of interconnection products).• Knowledge of commercial computational chemistry software and experience in the application of computational chemistry tools for database design, creation and analysis for drug discovery pipeline. • Significant experience in working with Inpharmatica’s proprietary databases (StARLITe™ & Drugstore ™) and other commercial databases. • Contributed to the development of various databases while working with Inpharmatica’s proprietary chemogenomics approach to drug discovery. Acknowledged work in ‘Nature Reviews, Vol 5, 2006’. • Effective team member with good communication skills and enjoy learning new technologies.

Current Rotation project: “Systems biology in clinical applications: Integrative ‘omics for patient to study Dupuytren's Disease.”

Systems biology approaches aim to provide a holistic and systems-level view of biological processes using computational tools and high-throughput technologies. It has emerged as an integrative approach that investigates inter and intra-cellular networks through mathematical modelling and simulation with the application of quantitative and mechanistic modelling to provide studies of genetic networks, signal transduction pathways and metabolic networks.

Dupuytren’s disease (DD) is a nodular palmar fibromatosis which causes progressive & permanent contracture of the digits. Current research on DD at CIGMR and MIB involves studies of tissue samples from patients with DD and integration of the datasets from genomics (SNPs), transcriptomics and proteomics collected from suitable test subjects and matched controls. Detailed quantitative phenotyping and correlation with microarray results as well as high-throughput genotyping has provided us with the datasets to implement systems biology approaches in fibrosis research.

Aims: - Develop a systems biology approach to understand tissue fibrosis using the datasets integratively and generate a global model of nodular palmar fibromatosis (DD). - A review of current computational systems biology, bioinformatics and microarray tools available for data integration and management to compare and contrast the technological advances.