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.

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Articles from April

Surgery simulator app: an interview with Jean Nehme

Touch Surgery is a mobile surgical simulation app that allows surgeons to learn and rehearse surgical procedures. It provides a cognitive map for operations on a virtual patient.

23 Nov 2014

Type 3 interferons and T helper 2 cells: an interview with Grant Gallagher, Managing Director, HUMIGEN

The type 3 interferons - usually called the “lambda” interferons, or “IFNL” - are the most recently identified IFNs. We (myself and Sergei Kotenko) originally identified the receptor and then the three ligands (IFNL1,2,3; very recently a fourth, IFNL4, was discovered); the key paper was published in 2003.

18 Nov 2014

Curcumin and tackling mesothelioma: an interview with Dr. Afshin Dowlati

An important point about this work is that the research into curcumin was conducted following a discovery about mesothelioma, rather than being the primary endpoint of the study.

17 Nov 2014

Using cardiac biomarkers to identify NSTEMI and ACS patients: an interview with Peter Mason

ACS is currently identified through the use of ECGs pre-hospital and the confirmed via a Troponin biomarker test once in the acute setting.

16 Nov 2014

Stopping the death of synapses: an interview with Dr Soledad Galli

Synapses are the sites that connect neurons – sites where information is passed from one neuron to another. They are highly specialized structures and synaptic function is crucial for normal brain function.

11 Nov 2014

Internet based screening mammography training: an interview with Dr. Holzhauer

About half of Radiologists in the USA who participate in breast imaging are estimated to read less than 2,000 screening mammograms per year. This is a suboptimal number, given that only 3-5 cancers in average are seen among 1,000 screening mammograms.

10 Nov 2014

Living with multiple sclerosis (MS): an interview with Gretchen Rubin and Megan Weigel

Multiple sclerosis, or MS, is a chronic, often disabling disease of the central nervous system, which is made up of the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves. Symptoms may be mild, moderate, or severe, ranging from numbness in the limbs to paralysis or loss of vision. Approximately 400,000 Americans are living with MS.

9 Nov 2014

Light-activated diabetes drug: an interview with Dr David Hodson

We've known about chemicals that can be light-activated for about five to ten years now. They’ve mainly all been applied to neurons and, more specifically, the retina. Nobody has ever really looked at any tissues outside of the nervous system.

5 Nov 2014

3D brain-like tissue: an interview with Professor David Kaplan, Tufts University

In 2D, neurons tend to form limited connectivity reflective of the 3D complexity in the brain and have more limited cultivation time before reduction in functions.

4 Nov 2014

Epicure project: an interview with Frédéric Cren

Epicure is a project led by Inventiva and Institut Curie that aims to deliver pre-clinical candidates on two novel epigenetic targets that have been selected due to their potential to activate immune responses against cancer cells. In addition one of these two targets has potential in respiratory indications such as asthma or COPD.

3 Nov 2014