Latest News

Dr Leda Mirbahai has been appointed as a member of the writing group for QAA’s UK Quality Code Advice and Guidance – Principle 11 (Teaching, Learning, and Assessment).

Leda will be contributing to the development of guidance on designing assessments that are fair, reliable, accessible, authentic, and inclusive, including exploring how providers can offer different assessment options to enhance accessibility and inclusion. Publication of the new guidance is expected by June 2026. This appointment recognises Leda’s sector-wide leadership in inclusive assessment design.

Researchers at the University of Warwick have teamed up with the Welsh Ambulance Services University NHS Trust and autonomous drone specialists SkyBound for a National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) study to test the feasibility of drone-delivered AEDs.

A new paper from the Saunders lab introduces CellMet, an open-source toolkit that extracts 3D cell shape and topology metrics within dense tissue. Going beyond basic measures like volume and surface area, CellMet reveal detailed morphological features - such as twisting shape - and highlights how cells interact and organise themselves. From organoids to Drosophila embryos, CellMet provides a powerful framework to reveal hidden tissue architecture.

Read the paper.Link opens in a new window
CellMetLink opens in a new window

A new paper from the Royle lab describes a method to label membrane contact sites in living cells on-demand. Laura Downie found that the Lamin B Receptor (LBR), which is usually on the nuclear envelope, can be used as a multi-purpose contact site highlighter. With a bit of engineering, LBR can label ER contacts with the plasma membrane, mitochondria, lysosomes, endosomes, lipid droplets and the Golgi! We found Golgi-ER contact sites persist in mitosis, a time when the Golgi is broken down but the contact sites remain intact! As a bonus track, the paper contains a method to segment mitochondria and ER from volume-EM data using machine learning, and find their contacts in 3D.

Read the paper here.

Pleomorphism in influenza viruses, characterized by diverse morphological forms ranging from spherical virions to elongated filaments, has been suggested to present significant implications for pathogenesis. This review examines the role of pleomorphism on the influenza virus life cycle, encompassing viral attachment and entry, replication, assembly, and budding, as well as transmission dynamics. It explores the determinants' underlying morphological variability in virions and their impact on viral fitness and host interactions. Insights into how pleomorphic forms of the virus influence disease severity and the efficacy of antivirals are discussed. Understanding the implications of pleomorphism in influenza virus pathogenesis is crucial for the development of effective disease prevention, control, and treatment strategies.

Read the paper here.

Warwick Medical School's MSc Advanced Critical Care Practice has been awarded full accreditation by the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine (FICM), one of only three courses in the UK to achieve this.

A study led by WMS researchers has revealed an abnormal process in the womb lining as the explanation behind some preventable pregnancy loss, paving the way for new tests and treatments for some women who experience recurrent miscarriage.

The International Zebrafish Society (IZFS), comprising of over 900 members, is the premier society in this research area.
Karuna was declared winner in the Board of Directors ElectionLink opens in a new window on 18 June 2025. Karuna will succeed Professor Cecilia Moens (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, WA,USA) and will be President of the International Zebrafish Society 2026-2027.
 

A film produced by the ISOBAR project team at Warwick Medical School has won the Best Film Award at the annual conference of the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases (GACD).

Warwick Medical School students and staff have been recognised at the Warwick Students' Union Awards.

Prehospital critical care teams are less likely to attend cardiac arrest patients in more deprived neighbourhoods, according to a study led by Warwick Medical School.

The Institute of Precision Diagnostics and Translational Medicine at UHCW was delighted to welcome a nationwide audience to the launch of its Multi-Omics platform on Thursday 8 May 2025.

Published in The Lancet, findings from The Big Baby Trial - co-led by Prof Siobhan Quenby MBE of WMS - show early induction of labour of babies suspected to be large for their age in the womb can reduce complications at birth.

The paper uses biophysical assays to directly visualize and analyse in vitro RNA synthesis carried out by the SARS-CoV-2 RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp). We purified the minimal replication complex, comprising nsp12, nsp7, and nsp8, and combined it with fluorescently labelled RNA substrates, enabling real-time monitoring of RNA primer elongation at the single-molecule level. This platform allowed us to investigate the mechanisms of action of key inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 replication. In particular, our data provides evidence for remdesivir’s mechanism of action, which involves polymerase stalling and subsequent chain termination dependent on the concentration of competing nucleotide triphosphates. Our study demonstrates the power of smFRET to provide dynamic insights into SARS-CoV-2 replication, offering a valuable tool for antiviral screening and mechanistic studies of viral RdRp activity.
Read the paper here.Link opens in a new window

Warwick Medical School has been ranked 10th out of all UK medical schools for incorporating planetary health into medical education.

Warwick Medical School has been awarded £440,000 by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) for a major new study exploring how job quality affects workers' health.

Cells contain a myriad of vesicle types with distinct behaviours and functions. Intracellular nanovesicles (INVs), collectively marked by the membrane protein TPD54, are a recently described family of small, uncoated vesicles that move mainly via diffusion. Many subtypes or ‘flavours’ of INVs appear to exist and participate in various trafficking processes. In this study (Fesenko et al., 2025), the Royle lab report the first INV proteome and explore whether ATG9A vesicles, small vesicles involved in autophagosome biogenesis, are in fact a flavour of INV. The INV proteome shows overlap with proteomes from synaptic vesicles, synaptic-like microvesicles (SLMVs) and ATG9A vesicles, which are particularly enriched for TPD54. To determine whether TPD54-containing vesicles also contain ATG9A and vice versa, the authors ‘trap’ each vesicle type by relocalising them to mitochondria and observe how the other vesicle marker responds. Trapping of TPD54 also relocalises the bulk of ATG9A vesicles, whereas trapping of ATG9A only affects a fraction of TPD54 vesicles, suggesting that ATG9A vesicles are a specific subset of INV. Moreover, trapping of INVs relocalises several proteins established to be ATG9A vesicle cargoes. ATG9A vesicles are thought to function as ‘seeds’ for growing phagophores, and the authors indeed observe that TPD54 depletion dampens autophagy in starved cells. Together, these data indicate that ATG9A vesicles represent a new INV flavour and implicate INVs in autophagic regulation.

Read the paper here.

Read the interview with first author Mary Fesenko.

In this Open Biology paper from the Dean lab, Athina Paterou and her co-authors present a set of >100 plasmids that allows endogenous gene tagging using a diverse set of protein tags and drug resistances. This facilitates extensive protein-protein interaction studies, biochemistry, and microscopy techniques understand protein function. They perform extensive validation of these tags, identifying the best (brightest, most stable) fluorescent protein for different applications, and highlighting the effect of tandem epitope tags on protein localisation and function in expansion microscopy appraches. To meet the needs to the parasitological community, they show the plasmid series works in related parasites, such as Leishmania mexicana, and create a plasmid for tagging GPI-anchored proteins.
Read the paper here.Link opens in a new window

There is an urgent need for novel classes of antibiotics to combat the ever-increasing threat of Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR). This work builds upon prior research conducted in collaboration between Professors Scott (Chemistry department) and Waterfield (WMS). Prof Scott’s lab has, and continues to produce, a very large and diverse library of synthetic metallohelix compounds, some of which are very potent against pathogenic bacteria. Importantly slight changes in the chemistry of the compounds allows us to “tune” their target specificity, for example, against Gram-positive bacteria (e.g. Staph aureus) or Gram-negative bacteria (e.g. E. coli). Two enantiomeric pairs of iron(ii) metallohelices, of different types can be created as water-soluble, stable, and optically pure bimetallic complexes, differing principally in the length of the central hydrophobic region between two cationic domains.

In a new study, led by James Shelford (Royle lab) and Selena Burgess (Bayliss lab, Leeds), we report a structural model for the interaction between ch-TOG and TACC3. These two proteins have a conserved interaction and are linked to cancer due to their overexpression in a range of solid tumours. Using this knowledge, we uncovered Affimers that can inhibit the interaction. Expressing the Affimers in cells led to the fragmentation of the pericentriolar material (see image), uncovering a new role for these proteins during mitosis.
The work was funded by a Cancer Research UK Programme Award to Royle and Bayliss labs, and was a collaboration involving the labs of Pfuhl (KCL), Tomlinson (Leeds) and Calabrese (Leeds).
Read the paper here.Link opens in a new window

Warwick Medical School is proud to be part of the new NIHR INSIGHT programme: ‘Inspiring Students into Research’, working with other higher education institutions, the NHS, and local authority partners in the West Midlands. This £4.6M investment from NIHR provides an opportunity for newly qualified and early career health and care professionals (excluding medical and dentist professionals) to undertake research training leading to a Master's qualification.

Eleanor Hoverd (NIHR ICA Clinical Doctoral Research Fellow, Warwick Applied Health) has co-produced a short film as part of her PhD study: Developing an inclusive health and care research system: a realist evaluation of participation in health and care research with people from Black African Diaspora Communities, in the UK.

Congratulations to Professor Lisa Dikomitis, incoming Director of Warwick Applied Health at Warwick Medical School, for receiving a highly prestigious NIHR Senior Investigator Award.

A groundbreaking new project, GroW, aims to empower women with chronic health conditions by providing a personalised and adaptive digital health tool to support long-term health management. The project, spearheaded by DDM Health, in collaboration with Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick and Walsall Housing Group (whg) has been selected for funding through the SBRI Healthcare Women's Health competition.