King's Scientists Win Two Wellcome Image Awards

Captured by scientists at King’s, images of a brain astrocyte cell and bundles of nerve fibres inside a human brain were selected as two of the Wellcome Image Awards 2015 winning images. 

The first image, produced by Dr Khuloud Al-Jamal, Institute of Pharmaceutical Science, alongside Serene Tay and Michael Cicirko, depicts a scanning electron micrograph of an astrocyte cell, with a diameter of approximately 20 micrometres, captured in the process of taking up carbon nanotubes. These carbon nanotubes have recently been explored as drug delivery systems to treat astrocytic tumours, the most common form of brain cancer. 

Dr Al-Jamal, who was also recognised in the 2014 Awards, said: ‘I was thrilled to hear from the Wellcome Trust that another image of ours was selected as a ‘winner’ this year too. The winning image represents our research activities on delivering drugs to the brain so I am happy that we are able to convey the message to the public in an artistic way.’

Kings second winning image was created by Dr Flavio Dell’Acqua from the Department of Neuroimaging at the Institute of Psychiatry,Psychology & Neoroscience (IoPPN). Created in the style of 19th Century drawings by French neurologist Joseph Jules Dejerine, it shows bundles of nerve fibres inside a healthy adult living human brain, obtained using MR clinical scanners and advanced neuroimaging techniques developed in the lab.

Dr Dell’Acqua is an expert in MR diffusion imaging methods and a member of the NatBrainLab an interdisciplinary laboratory dedicated to the study of neuroanatomy and tractography techniques. In collaboration with Dr Marco Catani at the IoPPN, he is now using these images for a new atlas of ‘Human Brain Pathways’ that will be released early next year. 

Dr Flavio Dell’Acqua said: ‘I’m very happy and honoured to hear that one of the images I submitted for the Wellcome Image Award has been selected as a winner. This picture really shows how intricate and beautiful the organisation of white matter connections is in the human brain. This type of picture has been created to look like the old neuroanatomical drawings of post-mortem brain dissections from the great neuroanatomists of the past.”.’

Winning images can be seen on www.wellcomeimageawards.org