Michael Curtis

Abstract Genetically modified pigs are being developed to address the critical shortage of human organs for transplantation. Although porcine xenografts lacking the three major carbohydrate xenoantigens (3KO) have been considered ideal for human transplantation, the optimal combination of human transgenes (HTGs) to mitigate protein incompatibility remains undefined.

A postdoctoral researcher in the School of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine & Sciences has been presented with the Cardiac Safety Early Career Seminar Award We are delighted to report that Dr Louise Hesketh, a postdoctoral researcher working in Dr Mike Curtis’ lab at St Thomas’ Hospital, has received the Cardiac Safety Early Career Seminar Award from the American Health and Environmental Science Institute (HESI).

The new experiment, led by Dr Mike Curtis, School of Cardiovascular Medicine & Sciences, used a heart attack model in rats to test the effectiveness of the newly synthesised compound OCT2013. Many of the 100,000 deaths from heart attacks that happen each year in the UK occur before the ambulance can arrive on the scene. This is due to ischaemia – the heart’s muscle not receiving enough blood due to a block in a coronary artery.