Our research

Unless we can understand how a disease works at the most basic level, it is difficult to develop new treatments. Sometimes these developments take a long time and are expensive to set up. Get A-Head is at the forefront in supporting research and finding cures into head & neck cancer and other diseases. We currently fund two research fellows who we hope, with our support and funding, will one day be able to understand and fight back against the diseases we face.

The Get A-Head Charity currently supports two related projects within the School of Clinical and Experimental Medicine at the University of Birmingham, both in the research group of Professor Jayne Franklyn and Dr Chris McCabe.

Dr Martin Read, Senior Post Doctoral Research Fellow, has been investigating the mechanisms underlying the initiation and progression of thyroid tumourigenesis. Specifically, Dr Read is interested in two proteins – PTTG and PBF – which bind each other within human cells. PTTG and PBF are usually expressed at abnormally high levels in thyroid cancers, and Dr Read has been manipulating the expression of these genes in thyroid cell models. In this way, he is assessing their influence upon the critical pathways and cellular processes which result in normal cells accumulating DNA mistakes and becoming transformed.
Dr Read has uncovered strong and novel evidence that PTTG and PBF associate with an important gene called p53, and alter its functioning. This in turn leads to the incorrect repair of DNA mistakes. He is currently examining how we might overcome these processes by manipulating the ways that PTTG and PBF function within thyroid and other cells.

A complementary research project sponsored by the Get A-Head Charity is being carried out by Dr Jim Fong, Specialist Registrar ENT surgeon. This work, which will form the basis of Dr Fong’s PhD studies, seeks to create a variety of thyroid cell lines with altered PTTG and PBF expression and function, to determine the wider consequences of the aberrant levels of these two genes which are present in papillary and follicular thyroid carcinomas.
To this end, Dr Fong is currently examining 113 genes which are critical to genomic integrity and DNA repair, and which may show altered patterns of expression in response to PTTG and PBF. Dr Fong will then be able to use the data he generates in thyroid cell models to examine human thyroid tumour samples, examining how these genes relate to clinical outcome. This will then inform us what the consequences are of high PTTG and PBF expression in thyroid cancer for the critical process of DNA repair, enabling us in the future to perhaps target these pathways in diagnosis and treatment.