Category: Grants & Prizes

Meet Stephen Shalet the Society’s 2021 Jubilee Medal Lecturer

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Professor Shalet is an Honorary Consultant Endocrinologist at the Christie Hospital, Manchester and Emeritus Professor of Endocrinology at the University of Manchester. His main research interests are late endocrine effects following treatment of cancers, pituitary disorders and in particular abnormalities of growth hormone secretion. In our latest interview, he talks about his career, the importance of keeping patient care at the forefront, complemented with an anecdote or two.

Tell us a little about your career path

I completed a BSc in Physiology at London University and qualified in medicine at the Royal London Hospital. My medical training posts in London and Bristol were followed by an appointment as Research Fellow in Endocrinology at the Christie Hospital, Manchester. I formally retired in 2005 but carried on seeing patients until around 2010. Now all I really do is I teach, I like the subject, so it’s not really work, it’s enjoyable. Occasionally, I referee a paper and participate in data safety monitoring boards. I still do a moderate amount of that work, which keeps me in the loop in terms of what’s going on in the field.

“Although I’d never done any research, the focus there was on childhood cancers. The survival figures for kids with cancer had massively increased but now these patients were having growth and puberty problems. That’s why an endocrinologist was needed there.”

What inspired you into research?

I always liked endocrinology, the science is very attractive. At first it makes logical sense, the pituitary controls the thyroid, the thyroid sends a message, the pituitary changes, but then hold on there’s the hypothalamus and it’s that complexity that makes the science really attractive. Clinically, you can have long-term relationships with patients. When qualified, I knew I wanted to do endocrinology but I was then doing a medical registrar job in Bristol and after attending a course on endocrinology, I realised I knew nothing. So I decided if that’s what I wanted to do, I had better learn some and then a Research Fellow position came up in Manchester – and that’s how I got started.

Although I’d never done any research, the focus there was on childhood cancers. The survival figures for kids with cancer had massively increased but now these patients were having growth and puberty problems. That’s why an endocrinologist was needed there.

What do you enjoy most about your work?

Clinical practice is what matters, I care about the patients. I’ve always cared about their outcomes. I also enjoy teaching and research. Those are the three components that I need and enjoy and of course they interact. At the end of the clinic, we all used to have discussions where you’d bring the rest of the team up to date, think about what we don’t know, why we don’t know it and how could we know it? That’s all part of the teaching training and research, thinking as well as doing the best for patients.

Has anyone particularly influenced your career?

I can’t tell you that I had a specific mentor but Colin Beardwell was a very good role model. He cared about patient outcome, was intelligent and an excellent teacher. He didn’t have an ego problem and was happy to see a younger colleague develop.

I’d also seen bad guys along the way, really unimpressive, and that showed me who I didn’t wish to become. I tried to feed off the bad guys and I knew I never wanted to be like that.

“At one point in Manchester, we published the worst surgical results for acromegaly in the world. At that time six surgeons did the operating instead of one. You need one because the number of cases isn’t high enough for six to obtain the volume of experience.”

What are you looking forward to at SfE BES 2021 in Edinburgh?

My lecture will look back over my career and research, and include an anecdote or two! When you get to my age, you have friends to catch up with, you may have known them 30 or 40 years and only have that once a year chat but I look forward to it.

I have a funny Edinburgh story from years ago. I flew from Manchester to Edinburgh and was waiting for a taxi outside the airport. A taxi driver approached me and asked something that sounded like ‘do you want sex’? The whole queue could hear as I replied, as reasonably as I could, that I did not want sex, it was November and very cold, but I thanked him very much for the offer. At that point the taxi driver clarified the taxi was a six seater and he wanted to know whether there was six people in my party! That was one of my most memorable Edinburgh conversations.

What do you think are the main challenges in your field right now?

Late effects of cancer treatment is still a challenge. You’re always catching up as these can occur up to 10 years after treatment. There needs to be expert resource available to treat the problems as they arise. Another issue is transition to adult life. Bridging the gap between paediatric and adult care can be very difficult. New more targeted treatments such as proton beam therapy will still cause endocrine damage, which may need to be tackled differently.

What do you think will be the next major changes for endocrinology?

More centralisation of key procedures. You need real expertise for these procedures, which may not come up very often around the country, centralisation means that volume of experience is contained in a centre of excellence. Although this means fewer endocrinologists get that experience, we need to make sure that patients are getting the best care.

At one point in Manchester, we published the worst surgical results for acromegaly in the world. At that time six surgeons did the operating instead of one. You need one because the number of cases isn’t high enough for six to obtain the volume of experience. Now Manchester has one surgeon and the results are as good as anywhere else. That’s why I think centralisation of certain key procedures will be better for patient care.

Any words of wisdom for aspiring endocrinologists?

Try to get a reasonable understanding of yourself. I think that’s the journey. Not everybody is destined to do lots of research, just as some people are better suited to clinical practice whilst others are destined, particularly in a subject like endocrinology, to be lab-based. You should try to work out what combination of clinical work, teaching and research works best for you. 

You can attend Professor Stephen Shalet’s Medal Lecture, “Cancer treatment endocrinopathies and growth hormone status throughout life” on Wednesday 10 November at 4:40pm.

Find out more about the scientific programme for SfE BES 2021.

Meet Roland Stimson the Society’s 2021 Starling Medallist

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Roland Stimson is a clinical academic endocrinologist, Professor of endocrinology and a CSO Scottish Senior Clinical Fellow at the University of Edinburgh as well as an honorary consultant at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. His main research interests are obesity, type 2 diabetes and energy metabolism. Here he tells us about breaking convention to build a career and why loves the discipline.

Tell us about your career path
Although you’re generally told not to stay in one place I’ve done exactly that, I went to university in Edinburgh then undertook my early clinical training just over the water in Fife. I didn’t do a BSc at university as I was keen to start seeing patients during my early clinical training. But I was really interested in human endocrine physiology so developed an interest in research and applied for a clinical fellow position to undertake my PhD with Professors Brian Walker and Ruth Andrew back in Edinburgh. I very much enjoyed this post and continued my clinical and research training with a clinical lecturer position thereafter. Subsequently, I obtained a MRC Clinician Scientist intermediate fellowship and more recently a Scottish Senior fellowship that has allowed me to continue my research in combination with my clinical work as an endocrinologist.

“I was always fascinated by the feedback mechanisms in endocrinology and how you could use these to pinpoint the pathology…”

What inspired you into research?
I’m really interested in human physiology and its dysregulation in disease, from the beginning I wanted to undertake research in humans and have tried to develop new techniques to better understand human physiology. I was always fascinated by the feedback mechanisms in endocrinology and how you could use these to pinpoint the pathology, by definition endocrinology is very much a multisystem discipline and it provides you with tremendous variety.

What do you enjoy most about your work?
I really enjoy discovering new mechanisms controlling human physiology, I find that fascinating and I particularly enjoy designing studies to try and answer research questions.

What will you be presenting in your lecture at SfE BES 2021?
I will be talking about our recent research on brown adipose tissue or brown fat in adult humans. This is an organ that increases energy expenditure to generate heat and a lack of brown fat is associated with poorer metabolic health. We’ve undertaken a number of studies in healthy volunteers to determine how human brown fat is regulated and I’ll be talking about the insights we’ve gained.

“I think this is incredibly important to improve patient outcomes not just for our own local patients, but the wider community, and often takes you down paths you never would have imagined so it is a very fulfilling career.”

What do you think are the main challenges in your field right now?
The prevalence of obesity continues to increase and is a major global health problem, therefore we need to find better treatments to safely help people lose weight and prevent the adverse metabolic sequelae of obesity. Many obesity treatments have been withdrawn due to safety concerns so finding pharmacotherapy that can safely achieve weight loss is a major challenge, although there have been some really promising, new developments recently in this area.

Any words of wisdom for aspiring endocrinologists?
I’m not sure I have any words of wisdom but I think endocrinology is a fascinating specialty that will continue to be intellectually stimulating for the duration of your career and contains so much variety that everyone should be able to find areas of particular interest to them. I would also certainly encourage young endocrinologists to become involved in research, I think this is incredibly important to improve patient outcomes not just for our own local patients but the wider community, and often takes you down paths you never would have imagined so it is a very fulfilling career.


You can attend Professor Roland Stimson’s Medal Lecture, “Strategies to turn up the heat – investigating human brown adipose tissue function” on Monday 8 November at 2:30pm.

Find out more about the scientific programme for SfE BES 2021.

Meet Heike Heuer the 2021 Pitt-Rivers Lecturer

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Professor Heike Heuer is Professor for Molecular Thyroidology at the Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at University Hospital Essen – University Duisburg-Essen in Germany. She is interested in thyroid hormone actions in the central nervous system (CNS) and uses mouse models to investigate the function of thyroid hormone transporters and to develop treatment strategies for patients with Allan-Herndon-Dudley syndrome. As the 2021 British Thyroid Association Pitt-Rivers Lecturer, she will present a plenary at SfE BES 2021. In our interview, she talks about her research and highlights how preclinical animal studies can lead to important and useful clinical advances.

Tell us about your career so far

I studied biochemistry at the Leibniz University in Hanover, followed by a PhD in neuroendocrinology at the Max-Planck Institute for Experimental Endocrinology. As a postdoctoral fellow I joined Carol Mason’s lab in the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University, New York, where I extended my neurobiology training. I was appointed as an independent, junior group leader at the Leibniz Institute on Aging/Fritz Lipmann Institute in Jena, where I headed a neuroendocrinology group working on thyroid hormone transporters. Later I became a tenured group leader at the Leibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine in Düsseldorf and in 2018, I was appointed as a University Professor for Molecular Thyroidology in Essen.

What inspired you into research?

“I’m pleased that our findings contributed to the rapid establishment of a treatment option for patients with a rare and devastating disease.”

I became interested in neuroendocrinology during my undergraduate degree, as I found it fascinating how peripheral organs communicated with the brain and vice versa. Encouraged by my mentors, Karl Bauer and Theo Visser, I started my research career by examining the thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) signaling system in the rodent CNS. I then became intrigued by the profound effects that thyroid hormones exerted on brain development and function. The breakthrough discovery of the highly specific thyroid hormone transporter MCT8 by Theo Visser and colleagues strongly influenced my research. It became unequivocally clear that thyroid hormones need transporters for transmembrane passage and, consequently, for reaching their receptors. The profound neurological phenotype of patients with inactivating MCT8 mutations (also known as Allan-Herndon-Dudley syndrome) encouraged us to develop mouse models in order to understand the underlying pathogenic mechanisms and also to investigate treatment strategies.

Now, a major focus of my group is to analyse cell-specific TH transporter mouse mutants as we aim to understand which proteins act as critical ‘gate-keepers’ for TH in the CNS, as well as in peripheral organs and how their transport activity is affected under pathophysiological conditions.

“Endocrinology is, in my opinion, a very attractive and exciting research field that offers many interdisciplinary interactions and cross-links with other disciplines.”

What are you proudest of in your career, so far?

With the generation of mice lacking both thyroid hormone transporter Mct8 and Oatp1c1, we successfully established a mouse model that replicates many clinical features of patients with Allan-Herndon-Dudley syndrome, a severe form of psychomotor retardation. Using this animal model, we were able to test therapeutic strategies including the application of the thyroid hormone analog, Triac. This treatment improved many neural impairments and based on our preclinical data, a first Triac Trial was successfully conducted, and a second Triac Trial is in progress. This highlights the importance of preclinical animal studies and I’m pleased that our findings contributed to the rapid establishment of a treatment option for patients with a rare and devastating disease.

What do you enjoy most about your work?

I mostly enjoy lively discussions with colleagues, coworkers and students about scientific studies and novel results.

What will you be presenting in your lecture at SfE BES 2021?

It is indeed a great honor for me to present the Pitt-Rivers lecture at the SfE BES 2021 as Rosalind Pitt-Rivers not only discovered T3 in her pioneering work, but was also the first to establish that the thyroid hormone metabolite, Triac, exerts T3-like effects in animals. To acknowledge her seminal achievements, I will highlight not only the impact of thyroid hormone transporter deficiency on brain development but also discuss how Triac application can improve neural differentiation, and may be a promising treatment option for patients with Allan-Herndon-Dudley syndrome.

What do you think are the main challenges in your field right now?

According to the classical view, TH action is largely determined by circulating TH levels that are mainly regulated by negative feedback loops within the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid axis. However, with the recent discovery of patients harboring defects in local TH signaling, e.g. due to genetic TH transporter or receptor mutations, this classical concept of TH action has been challenged. These patients clearly display a discordance between serum TH and TSH concentrations on the one hand, and tissue-specific TH deficiency and/or excess on the other hand. In other words, patients with TH and TSH concentrations within the normal range may still have a “hypothyroid” brain despite a “euthyroid” liver and may benefit from a CNS-specific TH supply. A major challenge is now to identify suitable biomarkers that indicate a tissue-specific change in TH status and to develop clinical strategies to modulate TH status in a cell/organ-specific manner. Certainly, a change in perspective from systemic towards local, tissue-oriented TH action will be needed for comprehensive understanding of TH effects in the body and will ultimately pave the way for the development of novel approaches for modulating cell-specific TH signaling under certain pathophysiological conditions.

What do you think will be the next breakthrough in your field?

I envision that the discoveries of novel mechanisms underlying local control of thyroid hormone action (e.g. identification of additional TH specific transporters or novel modes of TH action) will open new avenues to modulate TH signaling in a tissue- or even cell-specific manner (by applying e.g. novel TH receptor agonists, specific TH transporter inhibitors or novel trojan-horse hormone compounds).

Any words of wisdom for aspiring endocrinologists?

Endocrinology is, in my opinion, a very attractive and exciting research field that offers many interdisciplinary interactions and cross-links with other disciplines. Therefore, I can only strongly encourage young researchers or clinicians to become “endocrinologists”.

And for some words of wisdom, ‘Endocrine systems and their regulatory mechanisms and modes of action are complex – thus do not rely on selected serum values only. Always aim for the complete picture or you might miss important (and maybe yet unknown) local effects.’

You can attend Professor Heike Heuer’s Medal Lecture, “Role of thyroid hormone transporters in brain development and function” on Monday 8 November at 14:00 GMT.

Find out more about the scientific programme for SfE BES 2021.

Meet Mark Febbraio the Society’s 2021 International Medal winner

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Professor Mark Febbraio is a Senior Principal Research Fellow and Investigator of the NHMRC and Head of the Cellular and Molecular Metabolism Laboratory within the Drug Discovery Program at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, at Monash University, Australia. He is also the CSO of N-Gene Research Laboratories Inc., a USA-based Biotechnology Company. His research focusses on understanding mechanisms associated with exercise, obesity, type 2 diabetes and cancer, with the aim of developing novel drugs to treat lifestyle-related diseases. Here he tells us about his unconventional route into research and how he helped start a new subfield of endocrinology!

Tell us about your career path so far

“Being a scientist is a balancing act between small wins and frequent disappointment. Experiments often don’t work out, papers are frequently rejected and grant applications are often not funded. The key is to savour the small wins.”

I didn’t take the conventional scientific path. After completing my undergraduate degree in exercise science, I became a full-time (semi-professional) triathlete. During a race in Japan, I become extremely heat stressed and dehydrated, so I decided to go back to do a PhD looking at the effect of environmental temperature on muscle metabolism during exercise. For the next 6 years, I worked as an exercise physiologist and undergraduate lecturer until I met Professor Bente Pedersen, a clinician from the University of Copenhagen, which got me into research. Since then, approximately 20 years ago, I’ve devoted 100% of my time to research as an NHMRC Research Fellow and Investigator in the area of tissue crosstalk, exercise and metabolic disease.

What inspired you into research?

Professor Bente Pedersen and I shared data that we had independently gathered showing that during exercise, muscle produces and releases IL-6, a cytokine previously thought to be made predominantly by immune cells in response to inflammation. We coined the term “myokine” (muscle-producing cytokine).

Muscle then became known as an endocrine organ. About 15 years earlier my friends and colleagues, Jeff Flier and Bruce Spiegleman, discovered that adipsin, a serine protease homolog, was synthesised and secreted by adipose tissue, and the field of adipokines was created. Muscle was a little late to the party but we got there eventually!

What are you proudest of in your career, so far?

Of course the IL-6 story was a proud moment, but our work on heat shock protein 70 as a therapeutic target for treating metabolic disease, as well as our recent work on extracellular vesicles and the synthesis of the chimeric protein IC7Fc to treat metabolic disease also make me proud.

What do you enjoy most about your work?

By far, training and interacting with my mentees. It has been wonderful to see so many great people transition through the laboratory and go on to be highly successful independent scientists.

What will you be presenting in your lecture at SfE BES 2021?

Basically, I will be presenting the historical story of how we came to discover that IC7Fc could be a viable treatment for metabolic disease. The story has many twists and turns!

“My feelings are that the next breakthrough will come from the global push towards artificial intelligence in drug discovery.”

I think the main challenge is that a complex problem like metabolic disease can’t be cured by simple solutions. Whilst “the molecular age” produced so much important knowledge, it become clear that there is no single molecule that, if targeted, will produce the magic bullet to treat or cure a disease that is so complex.

What do you think will be the next breakthrough in your field?

My feelings are that the next breakthrough will come from the global push towards artificial intelligence (AI) in drug discovery. I’m not saying that we will get the “slam dunk” from AI, but I’m sure we will learn so much via the big data revolution.

Any words of wisdom for aspiring endocrinologists?

Being a scientist is a balancing act between small wins and frequent disappointment. Experiments often don’t work out, papers are frequently rejected and grant applications are often not funded. The key is to savour the small wins and understand that the failures are part of building success. I often tell my trainees “in order to be successful you must be prepared to fail”. It’s OK, in fact it’s normal. Above all enjoy the process and don’t focus on the outcome.

You can attend Professor Mark Febbraio’s Medal Lecture, “Activation of the gp130 receptor: a panacea for the treatment of metabolic diseases?” on Tuesday 9 November at 09:00.

Find out more about the scientific programme for SfE BES 2021.

Meet Greet Van den Berghe the Society’s 2021 European Medal winner

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Professor Greet Van den Berghe is the head of the clinical department and laboratory of Intensive Care Medicine at KU Leuven University and its University Hospitals in Belgium. The Leuven Clinical Intensive Care department is a large, tertiary referral centre treating over 3,100 patients per year. She is also Professor of Medicine at KU Leuven and actively researches the endocrinology and metabolism of critical illness. Here she tells about her career, research and how important it is to break boundaries and challenge classical ideas in the pursuit of better patient care.

Tell us a little about your career path
After obtaining my medical degree, I trained in anesthesiology and intensive care, then in biostatistics and later completed a PhD in endocrinology. I followed this path so that I could work at the boundaries of several disciplines, which provided an excellent opportunity to build a multidisciplinary research team and to expand on translational research in endocrinology and metabolism of critical illness, from bed to bench and back.

What inspired you into research?
When I was a junior attending physician in the intensive care unit (ICU), I observed that long-stay ICU patients, both children and adults, quickly began to look much older than their chronological age. At the same time they showed endocrine and metabolic abnormalities that mimicked certain characteristic of ‘ageing’. I hypothesised that maybe this ‘accelerated ageing’ phenotype of ICU patients could in part be iatrogenic, and if so, may be preventable. These thoughts formed the basis for my PhD research, in which I demonstrated that dopamine infusion, a drug commonly used at the time for haemodynamic and renal support, was causing an iatrogenic suppression of the anterior pituitary with harmful consequences. Based on these findings the practice of infusing dopamine in the ICU was abandoned.

“Together we have made exciting discoveries and we were able to repeatedly close the loop from an original idea triggered by patient care, to basic research in the lab and back to randomised-controlled trials in patients.”

In my postdoctoral research, we went a step further and identified biphasic neuroendocrine and metabolic responses to acute and prolonged critical illness in both patients and animal models. This research clarified many earlier, apparent paradoxes and provided the basis for our later work that focused on the acute and long-term harmful impact of hyperglycemia, the early use of parenteral nutrition and the pathophysiology of the HPA axis response to the stress of critical illness.

What are you proudest of in your career, so far?
In 2002, I inherited a very large and well organised clinical intensive care department to chair, upon which I have built research from bed to bench and back again. There was no research in the department when I started, so I had to build everything from scratch. Over the years, this growing symbiosis, between high-level patient care and research, has proved to be very successful. This also allowed me to recruit the best clinicians and scientists who now work effectively together as a very close team.

“I enjoy thinking outside the box, creating new ideas by crossing boundaries between classical disciplines”

Together we have made exciting discoveries and we were able to repeatedly close the loop from an original idea triggered by patient care, to basic research in the lab and back to randomized-controlled trials in patients. That is such great fun! So, I am most proud of my team, and grateful to them for making me happy every day!

What do you enjoy most about your work?
I enjoy thinking outside the box, creating new ideas by crossing boundaries between classical disciplines, and working with young, enthusiastic physicians and scientists, to generate new knowledge that forms a solid basis for better patient care.

What will you be presenting in your lecture at SfE BES 2021?
In my talk, entitled “Re-thinking critical illness induced corticosteroid insufficiency”, I will present novel insights from our recent research on HPA axis changes that occur in response to acute and prolonged critical illness. I will challenge the classical paradigm of stress-induced increased ACTH-driven cortisol production as the basis for increased systemic cortisol availability in severely ill patients. I will also challenge the idea that a short ACTH stimulation test can diagnose failure of this stress response.

To say it with a metaphor: “What you see is not always what you get”.

Any words of wisdom for aspiring endocrinologists?
Look further than the boundaries of your own discipline, there is much to be learnt and innovated when you go beyond them!

You can attend Professor Van den Berghe’s Medal Lecture, “Re-thinking critical illness induced corticosteroid insufficiency” on Tuesday 9 November at 18:45.

Find out more about the scientific programme for SfE BES 2021.

Embracing the diversity of endocrinology: an interview with Dr Julia Prague

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Dr Julia Prague is a clinical consultant and clinical academic at the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust and University of Exeter. In our interview, she tells us about her clinical practice and research projects, as well as how she thinks endocrine practice will evolve after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tell us a bit about your current position and what you enjoy most

As a clinical consultant and clinical academic I split my time almost 50/50 through the week. At the moment, my clinical commitments include outpatient endocrinology, and inpatient endocrinology, diabetes and general medicine. I moved from London to Exeter last year, and one of the big reasons to move was that near 50/50 split between clinical commitments and research. It’s a great balance that gives me time and space, not only to be with the patients, but also to investigate and take forward some of the issues that they bring up in clinic. Forming new collaborations and being in a new unit with new colleagues is pretty exciting too.

Don’t let yourself be put off by the general medicine component or thinking that it’s all diabetic feet!

Research wise, I’m particularly interested in the menopause through a number of different collaborations. I’m working with the respiratory department on a project looking at lung conditions and sex hormones. Investigating the impact of the menopause in diabetes. I’m also still involved in establishing the role of neurokinin 3 receptor (NK3R) antagonists to treat hot flushes and improve sleep during the menopause.

What got you interested in research on menopause?

Spending hours with the women in our research study of a new treatment for menopausal flushes, and from receiving hundreds of emails from menopausal women wanting to take part. My admiration for them was huge, not least because they so often described themselves as struggling to cope, yet they were the complete opposite of that, meeting endless challenges with amazing fortitude and whilst mostly suffering in silence. To then see them leave misery and suffering behind and find themselves feeling vibrant and human again was rewarding beyond measure. 

Furthermore, the majority of women will have menopausal symptoms that impact on all aspects of their daily life, but many will also have co-existing medical conditions before their menopause and these can also be impacted too. Many medical conditions are influenced by the menstrual cycle and that’s an aspect that is under-investigated and I think is really interesting. Inflammatory bowel disease, for example, can fluctuate during the menstrual cycle and Crohn’s disease typically gets better in pregnancy.

Diabetes is also impacted by the menstrual cycle, and it’s the same hormones that are changing during the menopause but this hasn’t been investigated, which is why I’m now interested in this, as this is something patients often report as being a problem for them. I think it’s important to listen to what patients are telling you and then try and investigate why that is, to hopefully find an improved solution for them.

There will be far fewer centres doing more complex endocrinology, and the development of this could be guided by some of what we have learnt regarding remote consultations and remote networking during the pandemic.

How was your work affected by the COVID-19 pandemic?

I was a Senior Registrar at King’s College Hospital  at the height of the first wave, so I became involved in  a lot of  the management and service re-design work within the diabetes and endocrinology department, including rota management to facilitate re-deployment to general medicine but whilst maintaining a core specialist service and whilst supporting our junior trainees and particularly our international medical graduates who were isolated from their families, and  ensuring our patients were supported and aware of sick day rules and  had all the medications they needed. Our department was also therefore part of the frontline team. I was the medical registrar on call for the first peak weekend of King’s admissions. Then I got COVID-19 and could not get out of bed/off the sofa for 4 weeks.

I moved to Exeter towards the end of summer 2020 to take up my Consultant job. Since then I have continued to do quite a lot of frontline COVID inpatient medicine. Now we’re involved in recovery and trying to catch up. Many patients couldn’t be seen through the pandemic because resources had to be syphoned off elsewhere.

The Society has become much more inclusive, and far more diverse, with a much broader mix of people, and I think that should really be celebrated and welcomed.

I never imagined I would interview for my consultant job on Zoom! Moving to a new city, a new department, a new consultant role and a new research role during the pandemic was definitely an interesting twist at such a significant stage of my life and career.

What are you proudest of in your career so far?

My work on menopause and NK3R antagonists – being published in The Lancet was a huge honour, and the potential that this work has to relieve suffering of women is incredible. As a doctor, all you want is to relieve suffering in your patients and this has that opportunity. It’s also given me a platform to continue working in that field and to be invited to speak at international conferences, as well as develop new collaborations.  

This drug class are now in phase three studies and it looks like they’re probably going to be marketed from around 2023/2024. This research is still advancing within the pharmaceutical field, butte top-line results coming out continue to show great promise for the therapy. Seeing the NK3R antagonists come to market will be amazing. For me, to have played some part in that will be awesome and to see patients being able to go to clinicians and get that medication prescribed will be great.

There will be far fewer centres doing more complex endocrinology, and the development of this could be guided by some of what we have learnt regarding remote consultations and remote networking during the pandemic.

What do you think are the biggest challenges in endocrinology?

We have to mention COVID recovery, in what was an already overstretched system. However, somewhat linked to that, is the pull of general medicine on our time as endocrinologists. The pandemic has further highlighted this to be an important issue. Hospital inpatient medicine is busy and can’t be cancelled. However, it is essential for recruitment, training, and retention that our specialist time is more protected. The new internal medicine training (IMT) programme will change the number of specialty training years to shorten it, which could have some quite big consequences for the endocrine discipline.  

COVID-19 has brought some positives though; it’s highlighted that we can achieve quite a lot remotely with patients using virtual appointments, and some patients prefer fitting their appointments in to their life rather than having to attend the hospital. How this translates going forward though could involve big changes for the specialty.

The Society has become much more inclusive, and far more diverse, with a much broader mix of people, and I think that should really be celebrated and welcomed.

What do you think will be the major changes in the future of endocrinology?

I think there will continue to be a drive for a smaller number of national centres of excellence in endocrinology. There will be far fewer centres doing more complex endocrinology, and the development of this could be guided by some of what we have learnt regarding remote consultations and remote networking during the pandemic. That will be good for patients overall but the downside could be that there will be a smaller number of centres with specialist services, which means that staff  may have less involvement in specialist endocrinology. A lot of these changes will be driven by the GIRFT recommendations, which will affect how all services are delivered going forward.

What challenges do you see for your research?

Availability of funding will be critical. COVID has had an impact on available funding but so has Brexit, there’s now a lot of European grants that UK researchers will not be eligible for. Universities have less money because they’ve had fewer students and international students may think differently about studying in the UK post-Brexit and post-pandemic. Charities that fund research have also been hit as many of their fundraising activities were suspended during the COVID restrictions. The Government has a significant financial deficit to address. Availability of research funding was already challenging but it’s going to be even more difficult in the years to come. It’s usually funding that restricts research activity rather than a lack of ideas or collaborations.

How would you like to see the Society develop?

My overwhelming memory of attending my first Society meetings in 2006/2007 is of a lot of senior white men wearing tweed jackets! Now every time I come to Society meetings it’s such a stark change from that. Everything that the Society has done, and is doing, to make itself more reflective of everyone within it is really important. Recruiting the next generation is also a huge part of that, and it is great to also see more focus on this now than then too. The Society has become much more inclusive, and far more diverse, with a much broader mix of people, and I think that should really be celebrated and welcomed.

That level of change takes time and effort and over the years I’ve tried to play some part in helping to make the Society a more different place to the one that I initially knew.

As a Leadership and Development Awardee I was really looking forward to SfE BES 2020 as we were going to be paired with award lecturers, and it is also always a great opportunity to catch up with friends, previous colleagues, and previous as well as potential new collaborators. But of course, that didn’t happen. I’ve just been finding my feet as a new consultant and researcher in a new city but being an Awardee has opened up other opportunities. I’ve been involved in discussions with an external organisation exploring new collaborations and identifying our shared goals and objectives that we could achieve together. I’m sure that being an Awardee has helped me be offered these opportunities.

Who have you been most inspired by?

Prof John Wass, obviously, but I have also been very lucky to have amazing clinical and research mentors. From the literal beginning to the end of my clinical training and beyond (now over 15 years!) with Dr Simon Aylwin at King’s and Dr Roderick Clifton-Bligh in Sydney. I also learnt a lot from Prof Waljit Dhillo whilst doing my PhD at Imperial.

Why do you love endocrinology?

The balance of the acute and long-term follow up of patients, and the importance of making the right diagnosis for patients based on their history, examination and targeted investigation. Many patients with endocrine conditions go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed for a long time, so when you make the right diagnosis and instigate the right treatment, they feel and do so much better and you often see it unfold in front of you. As endocrinologists we are also part of a much wider multidisciplinary team, which is great.

Any words of wisdom for aspiring endocrinologists? 

I’ve always tried to be involved with the Society in recruiting the next generation. It’s important that they get to see the ‘real’ endocrinology and diabetes because often, those rotation attachments are mostly inpatient general medicine.

My advice would be to try to get to clinic as much as possible because a lot of our patients are outpatients, and also to go and review specialty patients on the wards when they are admitted. Remember also that there’s lots of different sub-specialties within endocrinology (and diabetes) so there is a place for everyone and an opportunity to be involved in the areas that you find most interesting/rewarding.

Don’t let yourself be put off by the general medicine component or thinking that it’s all diabetic feet! I also always recommend going to SfE BES, it’s a really good platform for meeting other clinicians and scientists involved in the field, and hearing about the patients that we look after. Get involved, come along and see what the specialty really has to offer.

The Society for Endocrinology is 75 years old in 2021. As part of our celebrations, we are collecting members’ opinions, with a focus towards the future – after a particularly hard year for us all!

We are keen to reflect the diversity and breadth of our discipline by hearing from members across all backgrounds, career stages, career types and geographical locations, to get a true flavour of the range of views, needs and challenges faced by our Society members.

Would you like to get involved and share your views? Simply complete this short questionnaire or send your comments to media@endocrinology.org.

Resolving Uncertainties in Diagnosis & Management of Thyroid Neoplasia

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CARLA MORAN WEB IMAGES 1 (3)Dr Carla Moran is a Consultant Endocrinologist at the University of Cambridge and a convenor of the Society’s Thyroid Endocrine Network. In 2017 she was awarded a Society Themed Scientific Meeting Grant to hold the one-day meeting, Resolving Uncertainties in Diagnosis & Management of Thyroid Neoplasia, on 8 March 2019 at Churchill College in Cambridge. The meeting brought together international and UK experts, as well as practicing clinicians and non-clinical scientists, to discuss advances in the field. Here Carla gives us a report of the day.

Need for the meeting
The landscape of investigation for thyroid neoplasia and management of low risk thyroid cancer is changing. Overascertainment of thyroid nodules has fuelled an epidemic of thyroid neoplasia but the death rate from thyroid cancer is unchanged. Many of these nodules are unnecessarily over-investigated, and if cancer is detected, may be overtreated. It has been suggested that more than 200,000 cases of thyroid cancer have been unnecessarily detected in the USA between 1988 and 2007, and the UK has not avoided this phenomenon of overdiagnosis[1]. In addition, in the UK, almost all radiologically and cytologically indeterminate nodules undergo surgery for diagnosis, resulting in high rates of unnecessary surgery for benign disease. Although our international colleagues are using RNA and DNA diagnostic techniques to stratify the likelihood of malignancy in these nodules, such tests have not been evaluated in UK clinical practice. Pathological definitions of thyroid neoplasia are being revised, such as redesignation of follicular variant of papillary thyroid cancer to noninvasive follicular neoplasm with papillary-like nuclear features (NIFTP). Lastly, management of thyroid cancer is evolving, with surgical extent, radioiodine use and dose and TSH suppression all being tailored to disease risk. This suggests that a stratified approach, with use of better markers (radiological, cytological, molecular) to select nodules for investigation and treatment, is required.

Overview of the day
Current guidelines advocate a multidisciplinary approach to thyroid nodules and cancer, with input from endocrinologists, radiologists, pathologists, surgeons, oncologists and nurse specialists, however no national meetings are held with all these disciplines in attendance. Led by the Society Thyroid network, in partnership with the British Thyroid Association and UK Endocrine Pathology Society, this meeting gathered international and UK experts in all these disciplines, as well as practicing clinicians and non-clinical scientists, to discuss current UK practice and advances in the field. Invitations extended to members of other societies (e.g British Association of Endocrine and Thyroid Surgeons) and patient groups (British Thyroid Foundation, Butterfly Thyroid Cancer Trust) interested in the field.

Topics reviewed included: the thyroid cancer epidemic (Krishna Chatterjee, Cambridge), ultrasonographic classification (Steve Colley, Birmingham), cytological categorisation (Sarah Johnson, Newcastle), molecular pathogenesis (Chris McCabe, Birmingham), nodule molecular diagnostics (Bryan McIver, USA), pathological risk stratification (David Poller, Portsmouth), surgical management of low risk tumours (Dae Kim, London), papillary microcarcinoma (Carla Moran, Cambridge) and stratified management of thyroid cancer (Jonathan Wadsley, Sheffield). Oral presentations demonstrated that high quality UK research is being performed in this field.

Collaboration is key
Collaboration between disciplines was essential for this meeting; the primary speciality leading diagnosis & management of nodules varies widely between centres across the UK, such that specialist society (e.g. endocrine, surgery, pathology, radiology) meetings often exclude many interested professionals; it is exceptionally rare for all relevant disciplines to meet to discuss the topic. Discussing areas of uncertainty identified by all specialties allowed us to compare approaches. Internationally, variation in practice variation is also substantial, most notably with regard to the use of molecular diagnostic techniques. Clinicians in the UK do not have any significant experience of using such diagnostic tools, such that Dr McIver’s experience and opinion of this area was highly informative. Lastly, attendees were individuals experienced and interested in the field; this ensured that discussions were highly applicable and informative.

Funding was crucial
When organising this meeting, funding received from the Society for Endocrinology was invaluable; without it we would not have been able to attract such high-quality speakers from the UK and US. Feedback from the meeting was universally strongly positive, with many attendees expressing a desire to attend a similar meeting in future.

Future
A unique aspect of the meeting was the workshop held the day after the main programme, attended by those interested in pursuing research aiming to identify solutions to challenging areas of current practice. We hope the meeting will inform scientific design of a UK-wide, multicentre, prospective study to evaluate diagnostic utility of new molecular technologies alongside current cytological/pathological practice. In addition, participants in this meeting are likely to be key members of a working group which will formulate national guidance on the diagnosis & management of thyroid nodules in the UK.

References
1. Vaccarella S, Franceschi S, Bray F, Wild CP, Plummer M, Dal Maso L. N Engl J Med. 2016 Aug 18;375(7):614-7.

How can we inspire our future leaders in endocrinology and the Society?

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Graham Williams with Award winners SfE BES 2017
Prof Graham Williams (centre) with Award winners SfE BES 2017

The Society has launched a new Leadership & Development Awards Programme, to recognise and nurture emerging talent in endocrinology and help Awardees become the future leaders of our discipline. In our interview, Prof Graham Williams, President of the Society for Endocrinology, introduces the Awards Programme and explains how it will be used to inspire and support our leaders of tomorrow, and why early career endocrinologists should apply.

What are the aims of the new Awards programme?

My main priorities as President of the Society have been to ensure that we cater for every member and that we are prepared for the future by being able to develop and respond to change. An important part of that is to support people who are enthusiastic and dedicated to endocrinology so they are equipped to be our future leaders. The Society Officers and Council have introduced the Leadership & Development Awards Programme to help identify these individuals and prepare them; by providing opportunities to learn more about how the Society works, how it is governed, how the committees work and what its strategic aims are. The main purpose is to give everybody an equal opportunity to become more involved, and to ensure that all categories of our membership are well represented in the future.

Towards this goal, the Awards Programme is open to clinicians, clinicians-in-training and research scientists. We are also considering, with the Nurse Committee, how to bring forward a similar initiative that will suit our nurse members, who have different career pathways and needs, and will require an alternative selection process.

The overall aim is to ensure the Society is in a strong position for the future, by securing the engagement of our most dedicated members to help grow and develop our community.

Why do we need an Awards Programme to identify our future leaders?

Our members have always been engaged with endocrinology but the discipline is rapidly changing. It is no longer so easy for people to identify themselves as endocrinologists. There has been a move away from a traditional organ and disease based focus, with increasing emphasis towards interdisciplinary science, whole organism physiology and cellular and molecular signalling. This means many more people are dipping in and out of endocrinology as a discipline, which in turn impacts on the Society. We need to move with the times and ensure we include cross-cutting disciplines that are integrated fully within the Society and endocrine community.

What are your hopes for the Awards Programme in the longer term?

I don’t want to predict the future but I think the Society needs to be agile and responsive as the discipline changes. So we aim to equip Awardees with the skills they need to influence Society strategy and develop our plans as the field advances. Endocrinology is also global discipline and I think that building collaborations with other medical disciplines will be essential both in the UK and also with colleagues all over the world.

What advice would you give to applicants for the Award?

Answer all the questions as completely as possible but most importantly be yourself. When people answer honestly, it allows them to express their true sense of excitement and enthusiasm – and that is what we are looking for – people who are the ‘enthusiastic doers’.  Of course we are looking for those who can demonstrate clinical and scientific excellence in endocrinology, but they need to be excellent communicators and ambassadors as well.

What qualities do you think are important in our future leaders?

I think openness, honesty and the ability to listen to, and to take advice from, others are some of the most important leadership qualities. By sitting on lots of committees you can learn a lot from the chairs. The best ones are great listeners, adept at summing up and have the ability to direct people towards a sensible consensus. Excellent communication skills and wanting to help others are essential qualities for all leaders.

Apart from a dedication to endocrinology, it is important that Awardees are rounded individuals with other outside interests . Working hard is important but it is important to switch off at times and enjoy other interests.  For me this has come from sport and the great outdoors, but whatever it is “work hard and play hard” and you won’t go far wrong!  Having diverse interests also helps with networking, getting to know colleagues and in developing long-lasting friendships that cement the endocrine family together.   

What have you enjoyed most while serving on Committees and as President?

It has to be the people. I feel in a really privileged position to be able to work in the field I love, but serving the Society has extended that experience into being part of a community. Being able to meet and work with like-minded and fantastic people, from different disciplines, from all over the world, and who all want to achieve similar things has been very inspiring.

Who were your early mentors?

I have been fortunate to have had many outstanding mentors over the years but here are the early ones that inspired me into endocrinology and then research. As a medical student, I loved anatomy and was all set to be a surgeon.  However, my first house job was with Professor David London at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.  He is an eminent clinical endocrinologist and long-standing Society member.  During my time as his houseman, we had lots of interesting endocrine challenges and his infectious enthusiasm got me hooked, so I decided to change and take up a career in endocrinology.

After completing general medical training, I was encouraged to move into the laboratory to work on thyroid hormone action with Michael Sheppard and Jayne Franklyn.  They subsequently encouraged me to branch out and go to Boston to continue my research training at Harvard Medical School, and this move inspired me to pursue an academic career in basic clinical science.  Throughout my career many people have been inspirational and provided support and this never stops; you develop an expanding network that brings new ideas, collaborations and opportunities.  It is here that the Society makes such a difference and will continue to do so as the next generation takes the reins and leads us into the future.

I feel strongly that the new Leadership & Development Awards Programme will serve the future of the Society and the future of endocrinology well.  It will provide unique opportunities for those who apply and I hope it will help to support the careers of our talented trainees.  The applications are open to all so please don’t feel inhibited – just go for it!

Are you an early career endocrinologist interested in developing your leadership skills and becoming more involved with the Society? Applications for the Leadership & Development Awards Programme are open 1 April – 14 May 2019.

Full details of the selection process, benefits and how to apply are on our website.

Meet the Endocrinologist: Stafford Lightman, expert on regulation of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis

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Meet Stafford Lightman, Professor of Medicine at the University of Bristol. His research focuses on understanding the role of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in health and disease, and in particular its interface with stress and circadian rhythms and its effects mediated through glucocorticoid signalling. He has been awarded the SfE Medal and will be delivering his Medal Lecture at SfE BES 2018, 19-21 November in Glasgow. In our latest interview, he tells us more about his career, research and what he is looking forward to at the SfE BES 2018 conference.

*Prof Lightman is pictured at the Goroka Festival, Papua New Guinea’s equivalent of Glastonbury! 

Can you tell us a little about your current position and research?

When I was appointed Professor of Medicine at the University of Bristol, very little endocrine research was going on there, which had the great advantage of providing me with a clean slate and the ability to develop my own research theme. Now I have a lab group that ranges from the very basic cell and molecular science through physiology, right up to clinical research. I really enjoy being able to translate up to humans and then back translate down again to animal models. Having a group of scientists and clinicians working together is a really exciting environment to work in.

Can you tell us a little about what inspired you into endocrinology?

I was always interested in human biology and my earliest research was in anthropology, which naturally led into human behaviour and to neuroscience. I initially wanted to be an academic clinical neurologist but at that time neurology research centred around the peripheral nervous system, and I was interested in the brain! The one way I could investigate brain function was through the window of hypothalamic-pituitary function, therefore I became a neuroendocrinologist. Since then I have been working at the interface of endocrinology and neuroscience, which I find fascinating.

What you are most proud of in your career so far?

I am most proud of the people that I have helped to train, who have gone on to do well afterwards. It is also really rewarding to have set up lots of collaborations with mathematicians, and fascinate them in the dynamics of hormones. They have of course also been very both for me and the subject, developing   the concept of hormone dynamics. With the exception of GnRH, endocrinology was often considered a homeostatic but relatively static science, where hormone levels are measured and found to be either too high or too low. This is clearly far from reality and trying to bring the idea of dynamic hormonal systems into the mainstream is something I have been very involved with.

Tell us what you enjoy about your role as President of the British Neuroscience Association (BNA)?

I love meeting lots of really interesting people. The brain is such an interesting area and I enjoy understanding how it interacts with all aspects of our lives. The BNA 2019 Festival of Neuroscience will be held in Dublin on 14-17 April 2019, and will be in collaboration with the British Society for Neuroendocrinology, and include a scientific symposium sponsored by the Society for Endocrinology. So, there will also be a strong element of endocrinology running throughout the meeting. However, it is a great event for bringing together lots of diverse areas of neuroscience.

What are you presenting in your Medal Lecture at SfE BES 2018?

I will be discussing how aspects of HPA physiology are governed by dynamics, from the stress response to the circadian rhythm. The underlying dynamics of this system are what allow us to be flexible and to maintain a homeostatic state. I will also be talking about improved ways of diagnosing endocrine disorders. If we can harness novel technologies to measure dynamic changes in hormone levels in patients at home, we can gather much better information for diagnosis and treatment.

What are you looking forward to at this year’s conference?

From my own point of view the best part of the conference will be discussing posters with young, enthusiastic scientists right at the start of their careers. The posters are a really exciting area where people are putting out new ideas, in all areas of endocrinology. I like to be educated, so enjoy going to posters in areas where I don’t know much and hearing about what people are doing and why they find it exciting.

What do you think are the biggest challenges in endocrinology right now?

I think there are two main challenges, one of which I alluded to earlier.

  1. In terms of HPA the challenge lies around how we can measure dynamic changes in hormone levels in patients at home. I think the whole field of medicine is moving away from keeping people in hospital, to do lots of blood tests, sending them home, calling them back in to discuss results and finding you don’t have the right answer. Diagnosis can then be prolonged, inaccurate and very expensive, all of which is bad for patient care. The real challenge is finding better ways of doing this, and doing it in patients at home.
  2. Another challenge concerns the best way to give glucocorticoid replacement therapy. There is currently great debate on this in the field but it is important that we find the answer. Poorly managed glucocorticoid replacement is associated with considerable morbidity and mortality, so lots of attention is focused on finding a better way of doing it.

What do you think will be the next major breakthrough in your field?

I think the ability to monitor patients’ hormone levels over a 24 hour period will be a major breakthrough, and will provide the basis for better understanding of normal physiology and better diagnostic methodologies.

We have been developing a wearable collecting device that can be worn by patients at home. Using this device, patients would need only a quick visit to have it fitted and another, 24 hours later to have it removed. This is sufficient to provide full tissue biochemistry over a 24 hour period. This would minimise the time in hospital and provide a personalised medicine approach with a wealth of data that gives an overall picture of the individual’s health. This type of approach could revolutionise diagnostics and really improve patient care.

Once we understand how to apply this technology we will have better more rational ways of targeting and timing treatments, to address the challenges mentioned in the previous question.

What do you enjoy most about your work?

I love the challenge of new ideas and using them to work out answers to important questions. It is also a pleasure and privilege to have the opportunity to work with great colleagues.

Who do you admire most in the world of endocrinology?

The first piece of endocrinology that ever excited me was Vincent Wigglesworth’s work on the hormone, ecdysone. He was a brilliant entomologist and his beautifully designed experiments on the extraordinary process of metamorphosis was a real eye opener. He was my first endocrine hero!

Any words of wisdom for aspiring endocrinologists out there?

Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! You really need to enjoy your work, or you should be doing something else. I describe what I do as privileged play!

You can hear Professor Lightmans’s SfE Medal Lecture, “HPA activity: Don’t forget the dynamics” on Monday 19 November, in the Lomond Auditorium at 17:30. Find out more about the scientific programme for SfE BES 2018.