14 News ¤300,000 in Professor Kieran Taaffe Research Bursaries Dr Sulaiman has recently been appointed as a consultant physician to Beaumont hospital, having worked for many years in New York University, NYC, the United States. He has an international reputation in the area of profiling the microbiome of the upper and lower airways, in addition to acknowledged expertise in the diagnosis and management of obstructive sleep apnea.
The Charitable Infirmary Charitable Trust (CICT), Ireland’s oldest charity, has awarded two medical research bursaries to teams at Beaumont Hospital to fund scientific and medical research and simultaneously support education and development through pursuit of MD or PhD qualifications. Each award is for two years and has an annual value of up to ¤75,000. Following an open competition, the Medical Group of CICT awarded the bursaries to: Dr Christina Campbell, Respiratory Department,
Beaumont Hospital and Dr Olufemi Olumide Aoko, Hepatology Unit, Beaumont Hospital. Dr Campbell is a specialist trainee in Pulmonary Medicine in Beaumont hospital. She will evaluate susceptibility to obstructive sleep apnea in a post SARS-CoV-2 infection population. She hopes to establish the relationship between this condition and the upper airway microenvironment utilizing state-of-the-art next-generation sequencing. She will be working directly under the supervision of the chief investigator for this study, Dr Imran Sulaiman.
Dr Aoko is a specialist trainee in Hepatology. He will study the impact of bariatric endoscopy on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). This is a novel clinical approach to treating the most common cause of liver disease in Ireland and internationally. He will specifically evaluate the impact of this novel technique on metabolic and histologic parameters in obese patients with NAFLD. He will be working directly under the supervision of the Chief investigator for this study, Dr John Ryan, Consultant Hepatologist, Beaumont Hospital. Dr Ryan has recently been appointed as a consultant physician to Beaumont Hospital, having worked for many years in the Royal Free hospital London and Oxford University, United Kingdom. He has an international reputation in the area of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and has pioneered new diagnostic and therapeutic interventions in this area. Commenting on the awards, Michael Patten, Chairman of the CICT said, “The CICT goes back
to the foundation in 1718 of the Charitable Infirmary (better known as Jervis St Hospital), the first voluntary hospital in the British Isles. Today the Trust continues its focus on serving Dublin by supporting medical excellence at Beaumont Hospital and giving financial aid to Dublin charities serving the poor and underprivileged. “These new bursaries are designed to promote talent development and scientific/ medical research and discovery at Beaumont and are open to all the caring professions based on the hospital campus. We were delighted with the sheer quality of applications for these inaugural bursaries which bodes well for medical discovery at Beaumont. We wish the recipients well in the coming years and will track their progress with great interest”, Mr Patten concluded. The Bursaries are named in honour of Professor Kieran Taaffe, a long serving and inspirational member of the CICT Managing Committee, who was a passionate advocate of education and research. Staff at Beaumont Hospital are welcome to apply to become members of the Trust at any time. Since 1987, the Trust has donated over ¤5 million to research and teaching projects at Beaumont Hospital and at its medical school, the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland (RCSI) and to Dublin charities.
New findings from OCTAVE trial The ongoing OCTAVE study has published its first results on vaccine effectiveness in people with impaired immune systems. The study found that a significant proportion of people with immunosuppression have a low or undetectable antibody response after two doses of the covid vaccine. The study is important because it is one of the largest studies in the world so far into covid vaccine efficacy in immunosuppressed patients. It looked at both antibody response and T cell response to the covid vaccine. The OCTAVE trial includes over 2,500 people from across the UK,
recruited between February and August 2021, with conditions that affect the immune system (or have treatments that do). Conditions include arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, end stage kidney disease, solid tumour cancers, blood cancer, and people who’ve had a stem cell transplant. This includes 139 cancer patients (solid tumour patients and blood cancer patients) and 160 people who’ve had a stem cell transplant. The blood cancer patients had acute myeloid leukaemia or myeloma. The results released today are only based on 455 people from the trial, for whom all the necessary blood test results are available.
OCTOBER - 2021 • HPN | HOSPITALPROFESSIONALNEWS.IE
This includes 18 blood cancer patients (acute myeloid leukaemia or myeloma) and 42 people who’ve had a stem cell transplant. Everyone’s antibody response to the covid vaccine was measured 4 weeks after their second vaccine dose. Where possible, people’s antibody response was also measured in between their first and second dose, and before their first dose. Most people had either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca jab. These results were compared against 93 healthy individuals. Read about the findings here: These are only the first set of results to come out of OCTAVE. The study is ongoing and will
publish more data in the future. We are cautious about drawing conclusions from this very small sample, but the results do confirm that even when blood cancer and stem cell transplant patients do produce antibodies after vaccination, the quantity of antibodies is lower. It’s positive to see a good T cell response, although we don’t know what this means alongside a poorer antibody response. This study reinforces the need to find alternative methods to protect people with blood cancer from covid, through extra vaccinations or alternative preventative methods such as antibody treatments.
