Clinical Developmental Sciences

The linking theme of the department is that of a ‘fertilisation followed by development through to old age’. This involves research and teaching on molecular and cellular aspects and on patients and their clinical conditions. Research areas range from early congenital heart disease through to physiotherapy of elderly stroke patients.

The Acting Head of the Division is Professor Dafydd Walters. The five Section Heads are Professor Michael Patton (Medical Genetics; encompassing Clinical and Research Genetics, and interfacing with the Diagnostics Service provided by the NHS), Dr Mark Cottee (Geriatric Medicine, including the Centre for Rehabilitation and Aging), Professor Dafydd Walters (Child Health, interfacing with the Hospital Department of Paediatrics and including the Vaccine Institute), Professor Jeremy Turk (Child & Adolescent Mental Health with a strong interest in the genetics of child and adolescent psychiatry) and Professor Sabaratnam (Arul) Arulkumaran (Obstetrics & Gynaecology, interfacing with St George's NHS Trust. The Divisional Manager is Dr Christiane Fenske. All Sections of the Division have a strong interface with corresponding Clinical Departments in St George’s Hospital, enriching its research and teaching.

The Division is located in Jenner, Hunter and Lanesborough Wings, i.e on Medical School and Hospital sites.

Teaching activities range over a number of courses, throughout the MBBS, both GEP and 5 year. The BSc Intercalated course and BSc Biomedical Science also has a strong input from the Division, in terms of taught courses and research projects. There is also a popular BSc option in Genetics, generously supported by the Birth Defects Foundation. Several postgraduate taught courses feature in the Division as well as numerous students for higher degrees (PhD and MD).

Research programmes are well funded from peer reviewed charities, including a 5 years programme grant of over £1.5million from the British Heart Foundation (the "DARE" study), and membership of London "IDEAS" Genetics Knowledge Park, funded by the DTI and Department of Health for 5 years. The Wellcome Trust has funded a major ‘Twins UK’ initiative (£1.6 million) in collaboration with St Thomas’ Hospital over four years, enabling a number of twin-based studies to be carried out. The Birth Defects Foundation are continuing in their generous funding of several research projects in Medical Genetics. Many other funding bodies also support research in CDS.

The Division embraces four main research themes — Obstetrics and Gynaecology (Reproductive Physiology), Geriatric Medicine (Rehabilitation of Stroke), Child Health (infectious diseases, erythrocyte carrier therapy), and Medical Genetics (psychiatric and behavioural genetics, cancer genetics, gene identification and mutation analysis, with the focus on translating research findings into the routine laboratory in the form of diagnostic tests. This type of research emphasizes our mission to carry out research that can be rapidly applied to diagnosis and treatment.