Top award for Imperial Surgery & Cancer Professor

Professor Elaine Holmes elected AMS Fellow

Professor Elaine Holmes has been named as one of 48 world-leading researchers to join the prestigious Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Professor Holmes, from the Department of Surgery & Cancer at Imperial, joins a list of top UK researchers elected for their outstanding contributions to biomedical and health science, leading research discoveries, and translating developments into benefits for patients and the wider society.

This year's elected Fellows have expertise spanning sleep research, infectious and tropical diseases, diabetes medicine, parasite biology and ultrasound research and technology among many other fields.

As Professor of Chemical Biology and Head of Computational and Systems Medicine at the College, Professor Holmes’s work focuses on the search for new biomarkers associated with disease. By screening large scale genetic, health and lifestyle data, her group is able to search for common biological markers indicative, and potentially predictive, of disease.

I am of course delighted to receive such an honour and recognition for my work and I would just like to take the opportunity to extend my gratitude to the amazing research group who have helped me reach this point Professor Elaine Holmes Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences

Her work has expanded to cover the influence of human gut bacteria, by characterising the microbiome interactions with the host (ie humans), influencing metabolism. The findings have been applied to the study of gastrointestinal-related diseases, including colorectal cancer, obesity and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

Commenting on the Fellowship, Professor Homes said: “I am of course delighted to receive such an honour and recognition for my work and I would just like to take the opportunity to extend my gratitude to the amazing research group who have helped me reach this point.”

She added: “In dealing with such huge volumes of health-related data, our work can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. But we hope that discovering/identifying new biomarkers for disease could help to deliver personalised medicine in future.”

Professor Sir Robert Lechler PMedSci, President of the Academy of Medical Sciences said: “The Academy simply could not tackle major health and policy challenges without our dynamic and diligent brain trust of Fellows. I extend my warmest congratulations to all who are joining us this year, each of whom has earnt this prestige by advancing their own field of biomedical science.

“Later this year the Academy will celebrate 20 years of supporting the translation of biomedical and health research into benefits for society. As we celebrate this special anniversary we stand at a crossroads of both enormous health challenges and great opportunity for medical sciences. So I am delighted to see the remarkable breadth and depth of the expertise within our 48 new Fellows.

“We look forward to these experts joining us in addressing the health challenges we face head on and exploiting opportunities to improve health in the UK and internationally.”

According to AMS, 16 of the new Fellows are women, representing 33 per cent of the total elected in 2018.

The new Fellows will be formally admitted to the Academy at a ceremony on 27 June 2018, and the full list of 2018 Fellows can be found online on the AMS website.