Find out what makes us such a unique institution and discover the vibrant student life that is at the heart of our community.
Learn more about our key research areas and our research objectives.
See how our research transforms people’s lives in our community, throughout the UK and around the world
Read our guidance for staff, students and applicants.
This July, St George’s held its first in person graduation ceremonies in three years. Seven ceremonies took place over four days on 12, 27, 28 and 29 July at the Barbican centre.
Neurosciences research at St George’s is interactive and wide-ranging, from the molecular through mathematical modelling and linguistics to surgery and physiotherapy. Clinicians and scientists work closely together, as a Neurosciences Clinical Academic Group (CAG). European, UKRI, NIH and charitable funding support our cutting-edge research on the aetiology, diagnosis and/or treatment of dementia, movement disorders, brain cancer, spinal injuries and other conditions. Magnetic resonance imaging and deep brain stimulation are some of the strengths within our Neurosciences Research Centre, while nervous system disorders and neuron molecular biology are also studied in the Cell Biology and Genetics Centres.
Our large and expanding Motor Control and Movement Disorders Group is a centre of research and clinical excellence where we integrate our research into the active clinical service at St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. We use state-of-the-art techniques to study motor control and how it is disrupted in movement disorders such as Functional Movement Disorders, Parkinson’s disease, Dystonia and Tourette’s syndrome. Our translational research has allowed us to develop a UK leading centre for treating Parkinson’s disease and complex dystonias with deep brain stimulation, and functional neurological diseases with multidisciplinary care.
Principal investigators in this area:
Mark Edwards
Francesca Morgante
Erlick Pereira
Glenn Nielsen
Anna Sadnicka
The MRI group collaborate widely across St George’s and internationally, in neuroscience topics that include brain cancer, dementia, cerebrovascular disease and pain, as well as outside the brain in heart disease, osteoarthritis and lymphoedema. They are designing image acquisition and analysis methods to provide measures of disease severity and detect disease subtypes. A particular interest is to determine the extent to which healthy nerve fibre bundles are still present within and around brain tumours and stroke lesions in the living brain to better predict patient prognosis.
Franklyn Howe
Tom Barrick
Taigang He
Novel approaches are being researched for early diagnosis of dementia. One is a standardised assessment of language, which has been developed in English and Italian, adapted for use in Spanish, and is currently used by a worldwide network of collaborators. MRI has also been used to assess changes in brain structure and St George’s is a leading centre for research in brain microvascular disease, the main cause of vascular dementia. We are leading a phase II clinical trial of the Viagra-like drug Tadalafil, for possible use as a potential treatment to improve brain blood flow in dementia.
Peter Garrard
Atticus Hainsworth
Members of the Genetics Centre also have an interest in Neurosciences, including research into genes involved in Cluster headache (a highly debilitating condition of recurrent severe headaches), and the role of a cell breakdown process called autophagy, in neurodegenerative disorders. In the Cell Biology Centre, two groups are jointly developing methods for very rapid analysis of signalling between neurons that use the molecule glutamate, while another group is studying the molecular and cellular functions of a gene involved in development of nerve fibres for the sense of smell, as well as in correct development at puberty. Other work involves looking for biomarkers of the inflammatory and brain repair pathways to understand better how we can improve treatments for patients with brain haemorrhage.
Christopher Carroll
Soo Kim
Anan Shtaya
Laura Southgate
Katalin Török
We are developing new techniques to monitor pressure, blood flow and metabolism in the injured spinal cord to improve patient outcome. We are also investigating a novel operation, “expansion duroplasty” to treat spinal cord swelling.
Aquaporins are water channel proteins that play major roles in the brain and spinal cord including diseases such as neuromyelitis optica.
Marios Papadopoulos
Samira Saadoun
Browser does not support script.