BRAIN Unit update

Welcome to the new Brain Repair and Intracranial Neurotherapeutics (BRAIN) Unit website. The new site offers details about ongoing research projects, specific research highlights, upcoming events, relevant news and helpful resources.

At a time when we are relying heavily on digital resources, the team at BRAIN hope this website will help to bridge the gap where engagement events and more regular meetings and seminars would have taken place. The ‘Resources’ section of the site includes a helpful archive of all of our annual reports and other printed materials ordinarily distributed at engagement events.

Another new element of the site is the rotating Research Highlights section, bringing attention to new and exciting developments within the Unit. The first highlight on the website features an exciting collaboration with Professor Alan Parker, focusing on oncolytic viral therapies research, obtaining the correct tissue from neurosurgical tumour operations and generating the additional cultures in the lab for testing.

The new site will also be supplemented with a newsletter, distributed quarterly, summarising research achievements and signposting events and job vacancies. To sign up for the newsletter please contact us to enquire.

In a year of change, the unit also oversaw the recruitment of a new manager, Jo Baker. Jo said;

“It has been incredibly inspiring seeing the hard work that continues to take place, keeping essential research going through the challenges of the pandemic and ensuring the safety of our patients is paramount to clinical trials restarting. As I settle into my role as BRAIN Unit manager, I am looking forward to engaging with our local and wider research community and supporting the translation of research into patient benefit.”

We have been adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic and have since been able to re-open our Neuroscience Research Unit at the University Hospital Wales and our Biobanking facility. Another core feature of our work on intracranial delivery of human fetal cell transplantation in the Huntington’s Disease trial TRIDENT. This is the only study of its kind globally at the current time; all permission is almost in place to resume activities.