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New archaeological discoveries will lead to a major rethink of one of the iconic Roman cities in the Mediterranean, say researchers. The harbours and port facilities at the great twin sites of Ostia and Portus, at the mouth of the river Tiber, linked Rome with its whole Empire in the first two centuries via a network of maritime routes forming the hub of the Empire’s supply network. For over a decade, researchers at the Universities of Southampton and Cambridge, with colleagues in Italy, have been unearthing the treasures of these sites 30 miles from Rome. Using state-of-theart geophysical techniques and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Portus Project has been gaining a fuller understanding of the site’s development, as well as providing information that will
Image CGI view of the inner canal entrance
Credit: ©The Portus Project
Roman rethink
Research Horizons
help the Italian authorities manage this important area effectively. Now, a team led by Cambridge’s Professor Martin Millett and Southampton’s Professor Simon Keay has shown that Ostia is far larger than previously thought, stretching northwards beyond the Tiber. Moreover, the recent finding of warehouses, including one the size of a football pitch, along the northern bank of the river provides further evidence for the commercial activities that took place there. “The results of our work completely transform our understanding of one of the key cities of the Roman Empire,” said Millett, from the Faculty of Classics. “The enormous scale of the newly discovered warehouses will require a rethinking about the scale of commerce passing through the port.” www.portusproject.org
A new drug based on decades of research at the University of Cambridge has been approved for use in people with relapsingremitting multiple sclerosis (MS).
Clinical trials have shown that Alemtuzumab, marketed under the name Lemtrada, reduces MS activity, limits the accumulation of further disability over time and may even allow some existing damage to recover. The decision by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) brings to a conclusion work involving several research groups in Cambridge, stretching back over decades. Professor Alastair Compston, Head of Cambridge’s Department of Clinical Neurosciences, said: “I am delighted that the decision from NICE will make Lemtrada available on the NHS. [It] now provides an opportunity for neurologists to offer a highly effective therapy for patients with MS early in the course of their illness.” Lemtrada, manufactured by pharmaceutical company Genzyme, began life as Campath-1H, a drug developed out of research by Professor Herman Waldmann and colleagues in
the Department of Pathology in the late 1970s as an immunosuppressant to prevent the rejection of bone marrow. However, the story of Campath stretches even further back, to research by Nobel-Prize-winning Dr César Milstein at Cambridge’s MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 1975 on monoclonal antibodies. Compston identified Campath-1H as a potential treatment for MS in the late 1980s. The first MS patient was treated with the drug in 1991 and, as evidence began to mount that the drug would be effective if used to treat people before the disease process had progressed too far, Compston and his colleague Dr Alasdair Coles expanded the trials. The results of phase III clinical studies, published in 2012, confirmed that the drug is effective both in MS patients who are previously untreated (‘first-line’ therapy) and those who have already failed another treatment.
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NICE approves MS drug
The government has approved a £165 million deal for Papworth Hospital to move to the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
Cambridge has been awarded EPSRC funding for two new doctoral training centres in sensing and analysis.
Research growing ‘mini-livers’ from adult mouse stem cells has won the NC3Rs prize for reducing animal use in science.