Speakers
Dr Bairbre McNicholas
Dr Andrew Conway-Morris
Professor Manu Shankar Hari
Professor Danny McAuley
Stream 1
This session will examine the clinical and biological heterogeneity underlying pneumonia, ARDS, and sepsis, and evaluate the potential of precision medicine to improve outcomes through more individualised therapeutic strategies. The evolving role of corticosteroids in severe pneumonia will be critically reviewed, including discussion on their broader applicability and relevance to emerging clinical trials. The session will also explore current research priorities in sepsis, including insights from the NIHR-funded VACIRiSS trial investigating a novel vaccine to promote immune recovery in sepsis survivors, and an overview of the Sepsis James Lind Alliance (JLA) Priority Setting Partnership, highlighting key directions for future research and implementation.
Learning objectives
Chaired by Bairbre McNicolas
Andrew Conway Morris - Identifying lung phenotypes in pneumonia and ARDS – time for personalised medicine
Manu Shankar-Hari - Corticosteroids – why extrapolating evidence from CAP to ARDS is a bad idea?
Danny McAuley - Towards precision medicine in ARDS
Bronwen Connolly - Sepsis JLA priority setting exercise
Manu Shankar-Hari - Pneumococcal vaccination to accelerate recovery in sepsis survivors: The VACIRiSS Trial
Dr. Bairbre McNicholas is a dual-trained Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine and Nephrology at Galway University Hospitals (GUH) and a Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Galway. She completed her PhD on early inflammation in obesity and type 2 diabetes as part of the National Specialist registrar academic fellowship programme and following this, completed a basic science research fellowship at the University of Washington, Seattle USA. She completed training in Intensive Care Medicine in Ireland in 2017. Dr. McNicholas has led and collaborated on numerous clinical trials such as REMAP-CAP and REACT-SHOCK, Awake-prone meta trial group and studies on the immunology of sepsis and epidemiology of acute kidney injury. Dr. McNicholas is the CRRT lead for Ireland’s Acute Critical Care Programme, the AKI Pathway Lead for ESICM. She has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles and two book chapters, and is co-chair of the RCPI Climate Advisory Group.
Dr Conway Morris is a critical care consultant and MRC Clinician Scientist based at the University of Cambridge. He trained at the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, undertaking a PhD in Edinburgh focused on immune failure in critical illness and nosocomial infection. His research interests include neutrophil function and dysfunction in critical illness, where he identified complement component C5a as a key driver of dysfunction in patients. He has also developed and tested a number of diagnostics for pneumonia, using both host and pathogen-focussed techniques. His animating force is a desire to improve the management of infection in intensive care, and combat the rising tide of antimicrobial resistance. He was recently awarded the Royal College of Anaesthetists 2023 Mackintosh Professorship. He is the director of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine’s research and antimicrobial stewardship learning pathways.
Manu is one of the Directors of reseach at the ICS. He trained in Intensive Care Medicine in London, completed his MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and did his PhD in Immunology at the Peter Gorer Department of Immunobiology at King's College London, UK.
Currently, Manu is Chair of Translation Critical Care Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. His translational immunology research programme aims to enable precision immunomodulation in critically ill adults with sepsis and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). For additional details, please see - https://www.ed.ac.uk/inflammation-research/people/principal-investigators/professor-manu-shankar-hari.
Danny McAuley is a Consultant and Professor in Intensive Care Medicine at the Regional Intensive Care Unit at the Royal Victoria Hospital and Queen’s University of Belfast. He undertook his training in Belfast, Birmingham, London and San Francisco. He is Programme Director for the MRC/NIHR Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) programme. He has several research interests including Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome and clinical trials.
Bronwen Connolly is a critical care physiotherapist, and Senior Lecturer in Critical Care at Queen’s University Belfast. She is the Chief Investigator of the NIHR HTA-funded MARCH trial, investigating the effectiveness of mucoactive drugs in acute respiratory failure, and leads the development of a core outcome set for trials of physical rehabilitation in critical illness. Bronwen is the recipient of three previous NIHR Fellowships, and her research interests focus on acute respiratory and rehabilitation physiotherapy, the recovery, long-term outcome and survivorship of post critical illness patients, and clinical trial methodology around complex rehabilitation interventions. Bronwen sits on the NIHR Critical Care National Specialty Group and the UK Critical Care Research Group.