Five get £1.2m for medical research

Medical research fellowships worth £1.2 million have been announced by the Health Research Board. The fellowships, which will help to fund five post-doctoral researchers over the next five years, are co-funded by the Government, via the HRB, and the Wellcome Trust.

The "new blood fellowships in biomedical science" were announced last night. Three of the fellows recently returned from overseas positions.

Dr Paul Cahill will take up his fellowship at Dublin City University; Dr Carmel Hensey will join University College Dublin; Dr Helen Roche will do her fellowship at St James's Hospital, Dublin; and Dr Joe O'Connell and Dr Tom Moore will both go to UCC.

The fellowships are designed to strengthen biomedical research by creating new posts in the Irish university system and helping the recipients to establish their own research laboratories.

The Wellcome Trust covers the full cost of the research appointments for the first three years and then on a co-funded basis with the university in the next two years, after which the host institution takes over funding and the fellow becomes a permanent member of the academic staff.

Candidates are selected by open competition, peer review and interview. The scheme was set up for 1998 and 1999.

Dr Cahill will pursue research into the biology of blood vessels and how blood flow might affect their growth. Dr Hensey will study the regulation of spontaneous cell death. Flaws in this process are involved in a number of diseases.

Dr Roche will study a fatty acid found in meats and dairy produce. Recent studies have shown that foods enriched with certain fatty acids might help in disorders such as non-insulin dependent diabetes.

Dr O'Connell will also study cell death, known as apoptosis, and its associations with inflammatory bowel disease. Dr Moore will study a group of "pregnancy specific glycoproteins", substances in the body which are necessary to maintain normal pregnancy and bone marrow function.