AMRC 21st Anniversary

The Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) celebrates its 21st Anniversary next year, and to commemorate this, they are producing a short book about the contribution that both they as an organisation and their member charities have made to medical progress and breakthroughs. The following entry has been accepted on behalf of the Society for Endocrinology and will be featured in a chapter entitled "Metabolic medicine"

"And finally, an unusual story from a charity which unites many of the strands of metabolic medicine – the Society for Endocrinology. While it too has funded diabetes research since it was set up in 1946, the story below illustrates the more general nurturing role of medical charities. The Society gives grants to researchers, but also acts as a vital focal point where its 1900 members (anyone from anywhere in the world working in an endocrine-related field, at any stage of their career) can share ideas and seek advice from one another. And it is this function of the charity that Steve Atkins, Professor of Endocrinology at the Hull York Medical School says he finds so valuable. Professor Atkins, who is on the Council of the Society, is currently engaged in innovative work which he describes as illustrating the huge potential “when allergen becomes healer.” The idea behind his research is that allergens such as plant pollens or other spores might be used as new ways to give drugs like insulin or growth hormones, which are currently injected. As he explains “These have real potential in drug delivery, but also two other areas - cosmetics, because you could encapsulate oil in the spores and then rub these on the skin to release their contents, or food storage, where we have found that an oil which otherwise goes rancid very quickly can be stored in the spores and kept fresh. But the most exciting potential is that of drug delivery - the ability to encapsulate insulin, growth hormone or other insoluble drugs into pollens which can cross the gut wall intact, but are then destroyed within the blood stream, and release their contents.” To date, his team has developed methods by which a large variety of chemical entities can be attached to or encapsulated within the empty coating of these spores or pollens. The picture below shows the empty shell of a spore called lycopodium clavatum filled with insulin. While the charitable Society does not itself currently fund this work, which has been picked up by companies interested in the technology that could emerge, Professor Atkins says he has been hugely supported by interactions with colleagues and members there, both in his quest for support and through the general travails of the research process."