Student visits leading international Research Institute in Spain

A student from the Research Institute in Healthcare Science (RIHS), School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE) has visited the renowned Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III (CNIC), an international reference centre for research dedicated to understanding the basis of cardiovascular health and disease.

Kinza Khan, a first year student undertaking a PhD programme under the supervision of Dr Angel Armesilla and Professor James Cotton, was invited to Madrid in a collaborative project with the laboratory led by Professor Juan Miguel Redondo at CNIC. Miss Khan undertook a six week visit to learn how to use attenuated lentiviruses as vectors to express foreign proteins in mammalian cells.

The centre was opened in 1999 by the Spanish Ministry of Health and is located at the Instituto de Salud Carlos III campus in Madrid. Since then the centre is recognised by the Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence, an award given to the  top eight research centres in Spain.

The stay was funded by a University of Wolverhampton/NHS New Cross Hospital PhD joint studentship. The Cardiovascular Molecular Pharmacology Laboratory of FSE, University of Wolverhampton, has been exploring the effect of the protein Plasma Membrane Calcium ATPase 4 (PMCA4), a calcium ion transporter, in the vascular remodelling of aneurysms. Kinza will now apply the techniques learned in Madrid in this project to determine the potential of targeting PMCA4 as a therapeutic treatment for aneurysms.