CIMA / CMAR Joint Meeting

The MRC-Versus Arthritis-funded Centre for Integrated Research into Musculoskeletal Ageing (CIMA) and Centre for Musculoskeletal Ageing Research (CMAR) held a joint meeting at Edgbaston Park Hotel, Birmingham in May 2023. The meeting was focused on “Musculoskeletal Ageing research from discovery to improved health” and celebrated ten years of musculoskeletal ageing research undertaken across the two centres. The meeting was attended by over 130 participants, including students, academics, clinicians, allied health professionals and funders.

This is the first time that CIMA and CMAR have met collaboratively since the Covid-19 pandemic and represents a vision for increased cross-centre collaboration to better answer the big questions in this area of research.

The meeting was opened by Professor Eugene McCloskey (CIMA director) and Professor Janet Lord (CMAR director), who welcomed everyone to the meeting and presented a summary of the work performed across the two centres over the past 10 years.

Day one of the event kicked off with a keynote presentation from Dr Russell Hepple from the University of Florida on causes and consequences of neuromuscular junction instability with ageing. This session also included a talk by Dr Caroline Staunton (UoL Tenure-Track Fellow) discussing her research into the regulators of H202 transport and homeostasis in skeletal muscle.

After a brief tea and coffee break, there were selected talks from the submitted abstracts judged by the esteemed guest speakers. Following this, Professor Anne McArdle (UoL) presented some of the work of MicroAge, a project which sent muscle cells into space to use microgravity to learn about muscle ageing. To mark the end of the day’s events, Professor Nick Harvey from the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre provided an update on the UKRI MRC National Musculoskeletal Ageing Network. This was followed by an update by our funders, Deborah Alsina MBE from Versus Arthritis and Dr Jessica Boname from MRC. The evening finished with a poster session, displaying some of the fantastic research across CIMA and CMAR.

The second day of the CIMA/CMAR Conference was filled with more exciting talks starting with Professor Ingrid Meulenbelt from Leiden University discussing her research on molecular pathways in osteoarthritis. Other talks in this session included Professor Mandy Peffers (UoL), who discussed how CIMA helped with her progression from ECR to PI, and Dr Sarah Rice (NU), Professor Mark Wilkinson (UoS), and Dr Louise Renard (NU) who presented their work on genetics, epigenetics, and functional studies in musculoskeletal ageing research.

After lunch, Dr Robert Hughes from BioAge, the third keynote speaker of the event, discussed how the apelinergic-axis can be used as a therapeutic target in muscle repair and sarcopenia. Tuesday was closed by Professor Christine Le Maitre (UoS), who started her talk by getting the audience up and moving their lower back before explaining how her research is being used to develop the next generation of therapies for lower back pain.

Wednesday was the last day that CIMA and CMAR were gathered, and the morning was filled with more talks including Dr David Wilkinson (UoL) who presented his work on serine proteinases. The meeting was closed by the final keynote speaker, Associate Professor Sarah Snelling from the University of Oxford, who presented her research on single cell resolution maps of musculoskeletal tissue and her vision of having this created across the globe.

Following the talks, the meeting was closed by Professor Malcolm Jackson (UoL) and Professor Paul Greenhaff (University of Nottingham) who presented the prizes and shared their vision of the future of CIMA and CMAR.  

Congratulations to the winners:

·         Bone Research Society oral presentation prize – Dr Elizabeth Laird

·         Physiological Society oral presentations prizes – Thomas Nicholson and Eleanor Jones

·         Physiological Society poster presentation prizes – Dr Susanne Wijesinghe, Jack Roberts and Vincent Gauthier

Dr Chris Hurst - Why Research is trying to MUSCLE IN on ageing

News: UK Medical Research Council funds new National Musculoskeletal Network.

“The new national network builds on a great deal of excellent research that has been conducted by the Universities of Sheffield, Liverpool and Newcastle within CIMA.  It recognises the importance of good musculoskeletal health to healthy ageing, and provides a platform for enhancing wide-reaching basic, translational and clinical research to make a big difference to maintaining physical mobility within our communities, with all the benefits that that brings for individuals and society.”

Professor Eugene McCloskey, Director of CIMA, University of Sheffield

Read more.

University of Liverpool Seminar Series

As part of the University of Liverpool Institute of Life Course and Medical Science’s working from home initiatives, a series of seminars have been prepared by a range of researchers, many of which are CIMA members.

We thought it would be beneficial to our wider audience to highlight these fascinating seminars as they offer insight into a variety of topics related to musculoskeletal ageing.

you can watch those videos below:

Integrative Genomics of Ageing - Professor Joao Pedro De Magalhaes

Is the Alkaptonuria Metabolic State What We Need Right Now? - Professor Jim Gallagher

What Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Methods Can Tell Us About Metabolism - Professor Graham Kemp

The Ribosome, Cartilage and Osteoarthritis - Professor Mandy Peffers

Syndecam 3, A Novel Target for Treating Osteoporosis - Professor Rob Van ‘T Hof

The Anatomy of a Research Fraud - Professor Pete Clegg

CIMA Epigenetics 2020

On January 20th 2020 CIMA hosted a specialised meeting themed on the topic of Epigenetics. This meeting involved a series of presentations from CIMA based PhD Students as well as a host of external speakers including Jennifer Stobbs of Illumina, Dr Brian Diekman of the University of North Carolina, Professor Steve Eyre of the University of Manchester and CIMA and National University of Ireland Galway’s Dr Kasia Whysall.

The meeting, located at the Principal Hotel in York, UK, ran for one day, welcoming attendees from across Europe, offering them an opportunity to discuss the latest advancements in epigenetics research.

Videos of all of the meeting presentations are available below, as well as the accompanying PowerPoint files for download.

CIMA and the MRC Festival of Science

In June 2019, CIMA took part in the Medical research Council’s Festival of Science week. The event involved all three CIMA centres organising events to engage with the public, patients and other groups to highlight our research and offer people an insight into the positive contributions CIMA research is having on healthcare, policy and the advancement of the field of ageing research.

These events included:

A Pint of Science - Professor Mark Wilkinson answered questions from members of the public in the relaxed atmosphere of a local pub as part of the Pint of Science evening.

Behind the Headlines - In Liverpool, a group of CIMA members and collaborators presented a series of presentations showing how the sometimes exaggerated headlines we see in the press often don’t tell the full story. Each presenter took a headline from a major newspaper relating to their research and explained the truth behind the spin.

Group Sessions - In Newcastle, Dr Fraser Birrell organised a group consultation to show the significant and proven effect of the approach. The session, as well as a short clip showing testimonies from patients treated via the group consultation method, is available below.

CIMA at the Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee

CIMA representatives were recently invited to give evidence to the parliamentary Science and Technology committee on the subject of healthy ageing.

Professor Graham Kemp and Professor John Mathers of University of Liverpool and Newcastle University, respectively, were asked to attend the committee session in July of 2019.

A full video of the committee meetings can be found below.

MRC Festival of Science 2018

The MRC Festival is and event CIMA has regularly taken part in since our formation. Giving us an opportunity to not only support a positive initiative by the MRC, but offers us an invaluable opportunity to share our research with patient groups and other members of the public, not only to keep people informed and increase the visibility of CIMA as an organisation, but to allow our research path to be guided by feedback from people who may be living with conditions which our research aims to tackle.

In June 2018 a group of CIMA researchers arranged a group session where members of the public could listen to a wide range of presentations, these presentations are available below: