Niall Hyland
Biography
Niall Hyland is a tenured Lecturer, Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics in University College Cork. He received a BSc (Hons) in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Ulster and PhD in Pharmacology from King’s College London, London, United Kingdom. He was a visiting fellow at the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Louisiana State University Medical Center, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA (1998-1999) and completed an AstraZeneca/Canadian Association of Gastroenterology/Canadian Institutes of Health Research-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada. He returned to Ireland in 2007 to take up a GlaxoSmithKline-supported senior postdoctoral position at the APC Microbiome Institute and was subsequently appointed Lecturer in Pharmacology in the School of Medicine in 2008.
He is an early-career academic with a H-Index of 14 (Web of Science, 2015) having published articles in journals such as Gastroenterology and Gut. He is currently editing a book on “The Gut-Brain Axis: Dietary, Probiotic, and Prebiotic Interventions on the Microbiota” (Elsevier, 2016).
He is a Councillor for the Neurogastroenterology & Motility section of the American Gastroenterological Association Institute Council; Councillor and Steering Committee Member for the European Society of Neurogastroenterology & Motility; Co-Chair of the British Pharmacological Society’s (BPS) Systems and Integrative Pharmacology Affinity Group; and member of the BPS Meetings Committee. He is the current Chair (2015) and Scientific Committee Member for the Probiota Global Event (http://www.probiotaevent.com/scientificcommittee/). He is a Reviewer for the journals European Journal of Pain, European Neuropsychopharmacology, British Journal of Pharmacology, Neuropharmacology, American Journal of Physiology, Plos One, BMC Gastroenterology, The Journal of Physiology, Marine Drugs, Nutritional Neuroscience, Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology, Psychopharmacology and Neurogastroenterology and Motility.
He has delivered keynote lectures at the 2nd World Congress on Targeting Microbiota, Probiota 2014, Digestive Disease Week 2014 (Lecture presentation as part of the Neurogastroenterology & Motility Distinguished Abstract Plenary) amongst others.
Research Interests
Niall’s current research interests are focused on the regulation of host gastrointestinal physiology and in particular on the interactions between the microbiome, gut and the brain. In this regard his laboratory applies the Ussing chamber method to examine the influence of the microbiome on host intestinal secretomotor and barrier function. This technique compliments their in vitro cell culture-based assays and in vivo assays which they use to examine intestinal transit, abdominal pain and behaviour in our laboratory. Their work applies to stress-related disorders, including irritable bowel syndrome and more recently bladder pain syndrome. He also has experience in working with models of stress and anxiety, inflammatory bowel disease and obesity. More recently they have also applied the Ussing chamber technique to examine nutrient bioavailability. In collaboration with colleagues in the School of Microbiology and Department of Medicine, they are examining the temporal changes in the host microbiome in response to colon carcinogenesis. His laboratory is currently funded by the APC Microbiome Institute’s Innovation Platform and through the School of Medicine’s Translational Research Access Programme and the Irish Research Council Enterprise Partnership Scheme and has previously received funding from the Health Research Board (Ireland) and Science Foundation Ireland through a Centre Grant to the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre. Successful industry-associated projects have been completed with GlaxoSmithKline, Alimentary Health Ltd., Marigot Ltd. and Friesland Campina.
Publications
Please see http://publish.ucc.ie/researchprofiles/C007/nhyland