Bugs to drugs: how microbes made Fergus Shanahan (and you)
Pictured: Professor Fergus Shanahan, Director of UCC’s Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre
Pictured: Professor Fergus Shanahan, Director of UCC’s Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre
Dublin Talks is a series of inspiring talks by and about Irish people with big and interesting ideas. Organised by Dublin City Council and the Royal Irish Academy, the Dublin Talks are part of Innovation Dublin 2012 and are supported by Dublin City of Science 2012.
The title of Shanahan’s talk is “Microbes made me”, a play on a headline from The Economist that reads: “Microbes maketh man” but also, perhaps, an echo of a poem by Donagh McDonagh “Dublin made me”. (Like McDonagh, Shanahan hails from Dublin’s northside).
In a witty and informative presentation, he manages to describe in six minutes the centrality of ”bugs to drugs” in healthcare today. His research focuses specifically on the host-microbe interaction in the gut in health and disease. “This is the hottest area in contemporary medicine,” he asserts, a claim supported by the fact that the APC has received funding of approximately €35 million over the past 10 years and has leveraged it - effectively doubling taxpayers’ funding - by securing an additional €30 from non-exchequer sources, mostly from foreign direct investment and overseas grant.
Shanahan has been the driving force behind a major international symposium that will take place in UCC on Friday 30 November and Saturday 1 December. The symposium entitled “The Experience of Illness: Learning from the Arts” will bring together a wide range of speakers and artists who will explore the interface between illness and the arts. The symposium is complemented by an art exhibition entitled “Living/Loss: The Experience of Illness in Art”, which opens on Friday 23 November: the exhibition will be launched by John Crown, Senator and Oncologist who, as it happens, is also a contributor to the Dublin Talks series.
Shanahan is keen to point out that the symposium is just the start of a project which he hopes will continue for some time to come. He is in the process of writing a book on the topics raised at the symposium and hopes to stimulate a debate that will make artists more aware of medicine, and medics more aware of art. “Preparing for this symposium has made me even more convinced of the need to continue and to use the arts and humanities as an educational tool,” he comments. “There is enough material out there to justify an annual conference on these themes. The fact that more than 400 people have already signed up to participate shows what an appetite there is for this fascinating subject.”
DublinTalks can be accessed at: http://www.innovationdublin.ie/festival/2012/dublintalks/
Further information on the upcoming “The Experience of Illness: Learning from the Arts” symposium is available at: http://www.ucc.ie/en/spotlight/bodytext-172767-en.html