The UK’s leading medical charity for animal replacement research, the Dr Hadwen Trust (DHT), has awarded a major grant to Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) for research into healing chronic wounds, such as diabetes ulcers – a major healthcare concern in the UK.
The funding will be received by Dr John Connelly, Senior Lecturer in Bioengineering at QMUL. The DHT grant of £117,823 will fund a two-year research programme which will use human cells instead of animals to investigate wound-healing and improve the testing of drugs and therapeutics.
Dr Connelly, who is based at the Centre for Cutaneous Research within the Blizard Institute at QMUL, said: “We are so grateful to the Dr Hadwen Trust. The result of our research, we believe, will provide new and important insights into human-relevant wound-healing.”Dr Brett Cochrane, Group Head of Science at the DHT, added: “We are delighted for Dr Connelly and his team. It is an absolute joy when we can fund a project as full of merit and promise as the wound-healing research at the Blizard Institute.”
The Blizard Institute at QMUL has been a pioneer in the development of in vitro models as an alternative to animal research, using human cells and tissues and, in particular, the development of three-dimensional models.
In January 2013 Queen Mary and the Dr Hadwen Trust announced a joint collaboration which saw the creation of the world’s first Professorial Chair dedicated to animal replacement science based within the Blizard Institute.
For details about the Dr Hadwen Trust, its biomedical research projects and how to donate, please visit www.drhadwentrust.org.
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