April Cashin-Garbutt

Natural Sciences

April graduated with a first-class honours degree in Natural Sciences from Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. During her time as Editor-in-Chief, News-Medical (2012-2017), she kickstarted the content production process and helped to grow the website readership to over 60 million visitors per year.

Through interviewing global thought leaders in medicine and life sciences, including Nobel laureates, April developed a passion for neuroscience and now works at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, located within UCL.

See less

Articles from April

Diagnosing heart attacks in 1 hour: an interview with Dr Richard Body

Cardiac troponin is a highly sensitive and specific biomarker for myocardial injury but concentrations in the blood rise over several hours after the onset of an acute myocardial infarction.

28 Apr 2016

Innovations in pre-clinical MRI: an interview with Priv. Doz. Dr. Dominik von Elverfeldt

To me the most exciting aspect of pre-clinical imaging is its broad range, from very basic science up to applied science. You deal with a range of disciplines including biology, chemistry, physics, biochemistry, biophysics, cell biology and of course medicine, as the aim is the translation of research to humans.

27 Apr 2016

Transforming MR images into body composition measurements: an interview with Olof Leinhard

Today's medical science utilizes relatively simple anthropometric measures that describe the body, such as body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference. All of these measures are approximations of the body with the intention to characterize what's inside reflecting underlying phenomena that underpin the risk for different diseases.

26 Apr 2016

Why don’t MS patients always engage with specialists? An interview with Dr Anita Rose

The recent survey you ask about was conducted by the MS Trust in 2012. It revealed that nearly one fifth of respondents had seen neither an MS specialist nurse (MSSN) nor a neurologist in the past year, and so will not have received the comprehensive annual review recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

25 Apr 2016

Using Proteomics to Understand Alzheimer’s: An Interview with Dr Renã Robinson

In our bioanalytical mass spectrometry lab we use proteomics techniques to try to understand more about Alzheimer's disease. The primary thrust of our research is that we're interested in understanding the changes that take place outside of the brain and how those correlate with what's taking place inside the brain

21 Apr 2016

Artificial intelligence in healthcare: an interview with Dr Ehud Reiter

Artificial Intelligence has made huge advances in recent years in many areas, including language processing, vision, and machine learning; we are also seeing the emergence of platforms that integrate different kinds of AI, such as IBM Watson (Arria is a Watson ecosystem partner).

20 Apr 2016

Reducing hair loss during chemotherapy: an interview with Richard Paxman

The basic principle of chemotherapy is to damage the mitotic and metabolic processes in the cancer cells. The chemotherapy doesn't just target the cancer cells, it also targets the healthy cells, specifically ones that are rapidly dividing - our hair follicles are also rapidly dividing. We see damage to those hair cells, which then causes the hair to fall out.

19 Apr 2016

How will IoT impact healthcare? An interview with David Doherty

IoT is a term being used to help communicate the complex transition that's happening as Mobile transforms the Internet into a network of devices. The idea of the internet being something we go to and use a mouse to navigate is dead as we now can talk to SIRI on our mobiles to immediately summon Uber cars and buy things from Amazon that will arrive in just a few hours. Welcome to a new world!

18 Apr 2016

Home screening for bowel cancer: an interview with Deborah Alsina, Chief Executive of Bowel Cancer UK

FIT (faecal immunochemical test) is a screening test for bowel cancer which detects hidden traces of blood in stools. It is now used in population screening around the world including Italy, The Netherlands, France, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Spain, Slovenia, Malta, Japan, parts of Canada, and Southeast Asia.

14 Apr 2016

Tackling superbugs with antibiotic resistance breakers: an interview with Professor Colin Garner, Chief Executive, Antibiotic Research UK

Superbugs – or to give them their correct name, antibiotic resistant bacteria – arise on repeated exposure to antibiotics. In any population of bacteria there will be a few that are antibiotic resistant (approximately 1 in 100 million bacteria). If these bacteria are allowed to grow and multiply, an antibiotic resistant infection results.

13 Apr 2016