Philip Bath
This profile was originally published as part of the MRC Annual Review 06/07: People behind discovery. The review tells the stories of just a handful of MRC scientists, the work they do and the career paths they have chosen. It is available for reference purposes only.
Name: Philip Bath
Born: Maracaibo, Venezuela
Grew up: Venezuela, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Iran
Education: BSc (Hons), MB, BS, St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School; MD, King’s College School of Medicine and Surgery
Awards: Roger’s Prize, University of London
Current job title: Stroke Association Professor of Stroke Medicine
Time in current position: 9 years
“One week out of five I run the stroke ward in the hospital. Strokes cause horrible injuries; they kill a third of people within a year and leave another third disabled. The rate of strokes goes up with age, as does poor outcome. Research into the cause and treatment of stroke occupies the time I am not in the clinic. I’m currently working on two big MRC-funded clinical trials.
Last year the MRC funded the Efficacy of Nitric Oxide in Stroke (ENOS) trial. It was the culmination of projects that began in 1994 when I was at King’s College Hospital in London.
I moved to Nottingham to continue this work in 1998. We are studying using a daily skin patch to reduce blood pressure in acute stroke, so people who can’t swallow safely can also be included. Altogether, we carried out three preliminary trials in a total of 137 patients.
Getting the grant was a buzz. It was very big because the study will involve more than 200 centres in 30 countries and 5,000 patients. We are at the expansion stage right now, with most effort being spent in recruiting more centres. The trial is growing all the time.
My other big trial is STEMS2, which is looking at getting stem cells into the brain to repair damage done by strokes. It’s a so-called regenerative, or ‘neuroreparative’, strategy. Neuroprotection, or minimising brain damage immediately after a stroke, is very difficult and so far has failed to deliver. Drug companies have spent billions with little success. That’s why some of us are now investigating regenerative therapies instead.
STEMS2 uses bone marrow stem cells. There is evidence that some of these may have a role in renewing tissue and cells elsewhere in the body. Of course they have already been used extensively to treat people with blood diseases such as leukaemia, but mostly in young, otherwise healthy people. So far we’ve been successful in safely using drugs to mobilise these stem cells in older people’s blood. Next we want to take the cells out, label them with tiny particles of iron, and inject them back into the bloodstream to see whether they make it to the brain or not. We think that if they get to the brain, they probably won’t turn into new neurons to replace the damaged ones, but might motivate local stem cells to come and do the job.
I feel like research makes me a more credible clinician – the fact that I’m seeing patients gives me an extra drive to help them. The downside is that it can be distracting to have to go off to the clinic when you’re in the middle of an exciting project. But I love my job. If you asked me what I’ll be doing any day next month I couldn’t tell you. You need to be a free thinker and prepared to put time in and be very focused. You get out of research what you put into it.
Trials, more than most research, can take years to deliver. So you need to have other projects on the go in case a trial falls over. The different life cycles of research projects are so interesting and varied. There are great highs and lows.
Nevertheless, building up my team from about 10 people a year ago to 23 now has been a real highlight. It’s exciting to gather a big group of people who are so focused on a project – and it shows we’re obviously asking the right questions at the moment.”
Published August 2007