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

Could environmental toxins trigger amyloid plaques in the brain? An interview with Dr Paul Alan Cox

Many Chamorro villagers on the island of Guam perished from a puzzling paralytic disease that combines aspects of ALS, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's disease.

14 Mar 2016

Delivering microRNAs in cancer treatment: an interview with Dr Conde and Prof Artzi

microRNAs (miRs) are small endogenous noncoding RNA molecules (20–23 nucleotides) derived from imperfectly paired hairpin RNA structures naturally encoded in the genome that act specifically as triggering molecules to control translational repression or mRNA degradation.

11 Mar 2016

Is the global diet getting sweeter? An interview with Professor Barry Popkin

In the past, caloric sweeteners simply referred to cane sugar or beet sugar. However, over time we've created hundreds of different sugars that are all providing calories of the same amount, about four calories for every gram of the sugar. Some examples include corn syrups and more processed sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup.

10 Mar 2016

Systemic sclerosis: an interview with Dr Kristin Highland

Systemic sclerosis, also known as scleroderma, is a rare disease characterized by the thickening and scarring of connective tissue of multiple organs in the body

7 Mar 2016

Unlocking H5N1 virus replication: an interview with Martin Blackledge

We were able to show that one small domain of the polymerase, the part that is essential for entry of a piece of the polymerase into the cell nucleus, changes its conformation to allow it to interact with the transporter protein than takes it into the nucleus.

3 Mar 2016

How can electronic ink help patients? An interview with Giovanni Mancini

Electronic ink is basically what the name says. It's made of ink, the same ink particles that you see on a printed paper that comes out of an inkjet printer. We use black and white pigments that we add certain properties to that allow us to move the pigments around.

2 Mar 2016

Preventing the spread of Zika: an interview with Professor John Oxford

The link between the Zika virus and Guillain-Barré on the one hand, and pregnancy and the virus affecting the fetus in terms of microcephaly on the other, is still not confirmed conclusively.

1 Mar 2016

Are we ageing healthily? An interview with Professor Carol Jagger

This is the million dollar question but it is hard to give a definite answer. Most data on trends in life and healthy life expectancy use surveys that do not include people in care homes which can skew results at older ages.

29 Feb 2016

Digital health: the future for medicine?

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it," these were the words of Alan Kay quoted by Dr Euan Ashley at the Recent Developments in Digital Health 2016 event at the Royal Society of Medicine. No one exemplified this inspirational message further than Professor Tony Young, National Clinical Director for Innovation, NHS England.

26 Feb 2016

MOOCs: the future of healthcare training? An interview with David Robertshaw

MOOCs are short, free courses run by major learning providers to share their knowledge of a particular academic topic or to help students develop a specific skill.

25 Feb 2016