Seminar Series

We host a regular seminar series, providing the opportunity to hear from members of our BRC community across our five research themes, with representation across a variety of career stages, ranging from our Senior Investigator Fellows to PhD students.

We hold regular seminars for colleagues across our partnership and additionally for patients and the public, keeping people at the heart of our research.

Format

One hour seminars, followed by a networking lunch for those attending in-person, are delivered in a hybrid format to help ensure equity of access. We would encourage in-person attendance where possible to make the most of the networking opportunity.

The in-person location will rotate between Streatham (LSI), St Lukes (South Cloisters) and the RILD for fairness across all research groups.

Find the details of upcoming seminars and book your free space below.

Upcoming Seminar

Join us for our next NIHR Exeter Biomedical Research Centre Seminar where you’ll have the opportunity to hear from Dr Graham Boniface.

Date: Tuesday 14 January, 2025.

Time: 4.00-5.00pm (GMT), followed by refreshments and networking.

Location: The seminar will take place at St Luke’s Campus (room TBC). In-person attendance is encouraged to facilitate networking, but to ensure the event is accessible to all, a virtual link is also available.

Please note that a new Stagecoach line 4 University service is now in operation, providing free transport between campuses. Further details can be found here.

Email Dr Sophie Gould to register for this free event

Talk and speaker information

Speaker: Dr Graham Boniface

Exercise Dose and Rheumatoid Arthritis: Insights from My PhD Research.

This talk delves into the findings of Dr Graham Boniface’s PhD, which explores exercise dosing in rheumatoid arthritis through three studies. The first study, a systematic review, examined how exercise dose is developed in clinical trials. The second analysed data from the SARAH trial, the largest RCT for hand exercises in rheumatoid arthritis, linking dose to participant and therapist characteristics and clinical outcomes. The third used judgment analysis to uncover how therapists decide on exercise dosing for rheumatoid arthritis patients.

Graham Boniface is a health services researcher at Healthcare Improvement Scotland. With a background as a physiotherapist and 20 years of experience in the NHS across England and Scotland, he brings a wealth of practical and research expertise. Graham has previously served as a research associate at the University of Oxford and recently completed his PhD at Brunel University London. His research focuses on rehabilitation in Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), specifically advancing the understanding of exercise dose development and prescription in clinical practice.

Speaker: Professor Sallie Lamb

Strengthening And stretching for Rheumatoid Arthritis of the Hand (SARAH) trial

The SARAH (Strengthening And Stretching For Rheumatoid Arthritis of the Hand) trial addressed the lack of evidence around tailored hand exercises in providing additional improvements to control of disease activity and joint damage in people with rheumatoid arthritis of the hand, alongside disease-modifying biological agents and other drug regimens. The trial, which took place over a 12 month period, was able to show that a tailored hand exercise programme is a worthwhile, low-cost intervention alongside various drug regimens.

Sallie Lamb is Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, at the University of Exeter. An internationally recognised scholar in ageing, disability, and rehabilitation, she is also an experienced methodologist in the area of clinical trials and high-quality evaluation of health care practice. Sallie is Director of the NIHR Exeter Biomedical Research Centre (BRC), she has a strong commitment to improving the lives of older people through excellent research that answers difficult questions and can inform policy making and commissioning.

Coming soon…

Date: Tuesday 21 January, 2025.

Time: 12.00-1.30pm (GMT), followed by refreshments and networking.

Location: RILD Building Lecture Theatre, Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital (Wonford)

Email Dr Sophie Gould to register for this free event

Talk and speaker information

Speaker: Marianne Hollyman 

Optimising Care: Improving Patient Pathways in Pancreatitis Management 

Pancreatitis is a heterogeneous disease, ranging from mostly mild cases to potentially life-threatening presentations. Current pathways often show significant variability in care, which impacts patient outcomes. This talk will address strategies to standardise and optimise care, including ambulatory management for mild cases, reducing hospital length of stay, and thorough investigation of underlying causes. By tackling these challenges, we can improve efficiency, reduce variability, and enhance outcomes for patients across the spectrum of disease severity.

Marianne Hollyman is a Consultant Bariatric and Benign Upper GI Surgeon at Musgrove Park Hospital and a Consultant Researcher at the Exeter Biomedical Research Centre (BRC). She has a particular interest in snapshot cohort studies, leveraging them to generate foundational data that informs the development of research questions for future clinical trials. Her work primarily focuses on advancing care within the field of Emergency General Surgery.

Speaker: Jean-Claude Njabou Katte 

Evidence of a novel non-autoimmune insulin-deficient diabetes in African youths.

Studies of type 1 diabetes (T1D) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have suggested that the clinical phenotype may differ than reported elsewhere. We aimed to determine whether T1D diagnosed in children and young adults in SSA is of autoimmune origin. We studied 894 non-obese participants with youth-onset (age <30 years), insulin-treated clinically diagnosed T1D from SSA. We assessed autoimmune aetiology by measuring islet autoantibodies (GAD, IA2, and ZnT8) and T1DGRS. Endogenous insulin secretion was assessed by plasma C-peptide. In SSA, 34·9% were positive for islet autoantibodies; this subgroup had classical features of T1D. SSA participants without islet autoantibodies had substantially lower T1D genetic susceptibility than those with autoantibodies suggesting presence of non-autoimmune diabetes. The characteristics of this subgroup were not consistent with type 2 diabetes.

Dr. Katte is a Translational Fellow at the NIHR Exeter Biomedical Research Centre researching the aetiology and pathogenesis of young-onset diabetes in African and minority populations. A Cameroonian-trained General Practitioner, he holds extensive experience in primary diabetes care and completed his PhD in 2022 at the University of Exeter, examining type 1 diabetes in sub-Saharan Africa.

Speaker: Marty Frith 

Developing a Novel Genomic Biomarker for the Early Detection of Neurodegeneration 

Despite the large and growing global burden of neurodegenerative diseases, it is not currently possible to detect neurodegeneration before irreversible damage to the brain occurs. There is, therefore, an unmet need for a reliable and accurate clinical test that is capable of detecting neurodegeneration at the earliest stages of disease. The aim of this project is to leverage epigenetic profiling technology to develop a sequencing-based assay that can detect cell-free DNA (cfDNA) originating from degenerating neuronal tissue in human plasma samples as a biomarker for neurodegeneration.  

Marty Frith is a 2nd year NIHR Exeter BRC PhD student working in the neurodegeneration theme. The primary aim of his PhD project is to investigate the use of genomic biomarkers in the early detection of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease, Huntington’s disease, and ALS. Currently, his research is focussed on leveraging epigenetic profiling technologies, like DNA methylation and hydroxymethylation sequencing, to detect cell-free DNA that has originated from degenerating brain cells in plasma as a biomarker for neurodegeneration. 

Seminar Schedule 2025

• 4th March
• 22nd April
• 3rd June
• 15th July
• 9th September
• 21st October
• 2nd December