Register your place for this Inaugural Lecture on Microsoft Forms.

Join us to celebrate a special milestone for our new professors and hear about their inspiring career journeys. Doors for this event will open on 16.45 (BST), with the lectures to commence at 16.50. A drinks reception will be held at 18.00 immediately after the lecture.

Professor Michael Antoniou

Glyphosate herbicides: safer than table salt or deceptively toxic?

Abstract

Glyphosate herbicides, such as Monsanto’s (now Bayer) Roundup, are the most widely used weedkillers in the world. Monsanto and other pesticide advocates have claimed that glyphosate is safe even at high levels of ingestion and that it is safer than table salt. However, scientific evidence shows that glyphosate-based herbicides (GBHs) can have many toxic effects, including DNA damage, neurotoxicity, cancer, and birth defects. Using cutting-edge molecular profiling methods, my group has shown that exposure to realistic levels of GBHs can cause gut microbiome dysfunction, compromised gut integrity, and fatty liver disease – a modern epidemic. We have also shown that commonly used pesticide mixtures including glyphosate are more toxic than single pesticides. Overall, our work shows that the daily intake levels of glyphosate permitted by regulators need to be drastically lowered to better protect public health.

Biography

Michael Antoniou, Professor of Molecular Genetics and Toxicology.

Michael Antoniou was born in Famagusta, Cyprus in 1955 and emigrated to England with his family in 1959. He graduated in biochemistry from the University of Oxford in 1977 and obtained a PhD in the molecular biology of milk fat synthesis from the University of Reading in 1981. After spending three years (1980-1983) as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Nebraska, USA, Michael obtained a position as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Medical Research Council’s National Institute for Medical Research (Mill Hill, London) from 1984-1994 as a member of the Gene Structure and Expression group. He then joined the United Medical and Dental Schools (UMDS) of Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospitals in 1994, establishing his own research programme as part of the Experimental Pathology group. Michael has been based on the Guy’s Hospital site ever since, including following the assimilation of UMDS into KCL in 1998, when he became a member of the Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics. Historically, Michael is a molecular biologist, having made seminal contributions to the field, including biotechnology applications in gene therapy and protein therapeutic biomanufacture. In 2013, he expanded his research into the area of molecular toxicology, specialising in using multiomics (molecular composition profiling) methods to more sensitively measure outcomes from exposure to chemical pollutants (pesticides and endocrine disruptive plasticisers), including effects on the gut microbiome. Since then, Prof Antoniou’s group has become a world leader in glyphosate herbicide toxicology. 

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Professor Akash Deep

Emerging subspecialities in paediatric critical care : building a career and a field : Critical care nephrology and hepatology

Abstract

The future of paediatric critical care is poised to evolve significantly with advances in technology, precision medicine, and interdisciplinary collaboration. With patients going to multi-organ dysfunction and each organ having a unique physiology, there are more and more subspecialties (organ-specific) evolving in the field of paediatric critical care. Neurocritical care and cardiac critical care are now well established. In this lecture I will talk about my journey in the field of paediatric critical care from India to the UK especially in the field of critical care nephrology and hepatology, how we set up the Critical Care Nephrology section in the European Society of Paediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care (ESPNIC) , impact it had on the field in Europe, starting Liver Failure working group of ESPNIC and PALISI (Paediatric Acute Lung Injury and sepsis investigators) and creating awareness of how these sub-specialities are unique and require knowledge and expertise. I will discuss about the advancements in the field of critical care nephrology and hepatology in the last decade and my contributions, our unique protocol of multi-modal neuro-monitoring of acute liver failure, use of prostacyclin as an anticoagulant in continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) which is now being followed internationally and national and international collaborations we have been able to achieve to advance this growing field.

Biography

Akash Deep is the Director of the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit(PICU) at King's College Hospital, London and Professor of Paediatric critical care at King’s College London. Prof. Deep is the Staff Governor at King’s College Hospital, London.

Professor Deep is the Chair of Scientific Affairs for the European Society of Paediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care Society (ESPNIC). He chairs the Liver Failure Working Group for ESPNIC. He is the Chair for the Liver Failure Working group for PALISI (Pediatric Acute Lung Injury and Sepsis Investigators) network. He has been the Founding Chair for the Critical Care Nephrology Section of ESPNIC.

Professor Deep is the Chair for the Science and Education Committee of Paediatric Critical Care Society (PCCS) of UK. He is the advisor to the UK sepsis Trust for paediatric sepsis and is the author of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign guidelines for septic shock in children. Prof Deep is the Chief author of the Sepsis Toolkit for management of sepsis in children released by the UK Sepsis Trust at the House of Commons.

Professor Deep has organised many national and international congresses on extracorporeal support CRRT and hosted the First International Conference of Critical Care Nephrology in London in 2023. He also was the co-Chairman for the 8th International Conference on CRRT in London and the 9^th International Conference on CRRT in Orlando, USA. He was the Organising Chairman for 2019 U.K’s National Paediatric Intensive Care congress in collaboration with US’s Paediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Society (PCICS)

Professor Deep is the Chief Editor for the official ESPNIC textbook published by Springer on ‘’Critical Care Nephrology and Renal Replacement therapy in Children’’. He is an invited national and international speaker in major Paediatric and Paediatric Intensive Care conferences.

Special interests include various aspects of management of acute liver failure especially extracorporeal support in acute liver failure in children, acute kidney injury in neonates and children, Continuous renal replacement therapy, sepsis education/awareness and haemodynamics in septic shock