Pain: Why does it exist, how does it work and how can we more effectively treat it?

Professor Ewan St. John Smith - A V Hill Lecture

• 11 November 2024, 18:00 – 19:00
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre

The sensation of pain is one which nearly everyone is familiar with, usually being considered an unpleasant experience. Wouldn’t a life without pain be better? Drawing on human genetics and the wider animal kingdom, we shall see that there are in fact benefits to pain, or rather nociception, the neural process encoding noxious stimuli. Pain is not however static. For example, following an accident, the injured part of the body becomes more sensitive, a phenomenon that usually resolves as the injury heals. Understanding the molecular processes by which pain functions and how the sensitivity in the system changes under different conditions is important for the development of novel therapeutics to treat the chronic pain, such as that associated with osteoarthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, endometriosis, and a wealth of other conditions. Looking to potential new therapeutic avenues, we will discuss what can be learned from studying human genetics and extremophile organisms, such as the naked mole-rat, as well what the future holds regard gene- and cell-based therapy.

Signals from the beginning of the universe

Professor Jo Dunkley OBE

• 25 November 2024, 18:00 – 19:00
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre

Signals from the beginning of the universe

14 October 2024

2024 Sedgwick Studentships

Anglia Ruskin University and the Cambridge Philosophical Society are requesting applications for a PhD studentship.

24 September 2024

Department of Plant Sciences help re-create a 10th Century incense recipe

CPS Council member Professor John Carr helps to re-create a 10th Century recipe for incense from the collection of the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College.