https://www.gosh.nhs.uk/news/gosh-research-and-innovation-image-competition-a-moment-of-discovery/

Stunning images showcase life-changing research at GOSH

28 Feb 2023, 9 a.m.

A captivating 3D image that is helping researchers to uncover the secrets of childhood cancers is crowned the winner of our 2022/23 image competition ‘A moment of discovery’.  

Staff were from across Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), and its affiliated institutes including the National Institute for Health and Care Research GOSH Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR GOSH BRC) and University College London Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (UCL GOS ICH) were invited to submit an image that captures a ‘moment’ of their life changing research. This year the competition was also opened to children’s hospitals across the UK within the NIHR GOSH BRC Paediatric Excellent Initiative, including Alder Hey, Birmingham and Sheffield.

11 images, gifs and videos which illustrate the breadth of transformative research connected to GOSH were shortlisted and put before three panels – the GOSH Young People's Advisory Group for research (YPAG), NIHR GOSH BRC stakeholders and the GOSH staff networks. Each panel chose a favourite, and these three favourites were put to the public who voted for an overall winner via social media.

After hundreds of votes across social media platforms, the image crowned the winner was ‘A 3D snapshot of the hidden highways in childhood kidney cancer', entered by a team of multidisciplinary researchers at GOSH and UCL GOSH ICH.

Overall winner and YPAG favourite: A 3D snapshot of the hidden highways in childhood kidney cancer

A network of blue and purple branching tubes on a black background. The image shows many layers providing a 3D effect. There are yellow dots throughout around the image.

A 3D snapshot of the hidden highways in childhood kidney cancer

The winning image was entered by Dr Daniyal Jafree, UCL GOS ICH Postdoctoral Researcher, Radu Polschi, UCL Medical Student, Aleksandra Letunovska, UCL GOS ICH Biomedical Scientist, and Reem Al-Saadi, UCL GOS ICH Senior Research Associate.

This tangle of blues and purples peppered with gold, shows the lymph network (blue) within a kidney tumour alongside other structures such as blood vessels (purple) and immune cells (yellow). These ‘hidden highways’ are usually responsible for waste disposal, however cancers can hijack the system and use them to spread tumour cells around the body.

These systems are incredibly hard to see using traditional microscope techniques. Through collaboration, the team brought their unique skills together to generate this image using a new 3D imaging technique to view the lymph network within the tumour in high detail, to better understand how cancers grow and spread.

The team behind the image

Seven members of the winning team are pictured on a staircase.

Pictured: Professor David Long, Professor of Paediatric Nephrology, UCL GOS ICH, Dr Ciaran Hutchinson, Consultant in Paediatric & Perinatal Pathology, GOSH, Dr Daniyal Jafree, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UCL GOS ICH, Dr Dale Moulding, Senior Research Fellow, UCL GOS ICH, Ms Reem Al-Saadi, Senior Translational Research Manager, UCL GOS ICH, Ms Aleksandra Letunovska, Biomedical Scientist, UCL GOS ICH, Mr Radu Polschi, Medical Student, UCL.

Pictured above are just some of the team that helped to create the winning image. The multidisciplinary team are looking at how cancers grow and spread through lymph networks. The hope is that this will help them understand whether the size of the network can predict how well children respond to chemotherapy, or if these highways influence the likelihood of cancer spread.

This image, and the teams hard work behind it, is an example of how research and innovation is only possible through collaboration.

I’ve been working at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health for 7 years, and in that time, two things have become very clear. Firstly, it’s so important that we communicate our research to the people we ultimately hope to benefit: patients, their families and the public.

Secondly, none of our research would be possible without a big team of scientists and clinical professionals, all with different backgrounds and experiences, all sharing the common goal of improving diagnosis and treatment for childhood diseases and cancer.

The team and I are so thrilled that our image, which showcases just how important these two things are to research and innovation, was voted as favourite by the public.

Dr Daniyal Jafree, UCL GOS ICH Postdoctoral Researcher

GOSH Staff Network’s favourite: Stimulating the brain, an evolving treatment for children with drug-resistant seizures

A cross section of a simulated brain. The brain is grey with the outside folds resembling the shape of a lion's mane, or a stag. The centre of the image looks like a lions face and nose. Two blue deep brain stimulation wires look like eyes on the image.

Stimulating the brain: an evolving treatment for children with drug-resistant seizures

Entered by Rory Piper, Lewis Spitz Surgeon Scientist PhD Student, this image resembling the features of a lion has captured the cross-section of a simulated brain used to help study potential treatments for epilepsy in children.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a type of brain surgery that uses electrical pulses to change the way the brain works. This treatment can be helpful in certain brain conditions, such as epilepsy, in which the brain's electrical activity is abnormal and needs to be corrected or changed. Here, a representative cross-section of the brain (looking from front to back) shows two DBS wires implanted in the thalamic regions (blue), which are parts of the brain involved in the routing of electrical signals.

NIHR GOSH BRC Partners’ favourite: Nasal COVID-19 factories

A microscope image showing human nasal cells. There is a horizontal divide through the middle of the image where the border of the human nasal cells is shown. There are green epithelial cells (on the right of the image) and yellow mucus secreting cells (on the left of the image) highlighted. Clusters of red dots show SARS-CoV-2 viral particles, these are closer to the dark green epithelial cells.

Nasal COVID-19 factories

Entered by Dr Maximillian Woodall, UCL GOS ICH Research Fellow, Dr Samuel Ellis, UCL GOS ICH Research Fellow and Dr Andreia Pinto, Leica Microsystems, this striking collection of shapes and colours shows human nose cells infected with SARS-CoV-2 (viral particles in red). It was taken as part of a study investigating how SARS-CoV-2 (Covid) infection differs with age.

From the image, it is possible to see that some cells, such as epithelial cells (dark green) are much more susceptible to infection than others like mucus secreting cells (yellow).

Scroll through the full shortlist below

  • Six spherical bundles of cells with complex networks are pictured, in two lines of three. These are (from left to right) gold, purple and green (top left), purple, green and yellow (bottom left), red and gold (top centre), blue and orange (bottom centre), green, purple and blue (top right), and yellow, blue and orange (bottom right).

    ‘Cellular System’ was entered by NIHR GOSH BRC PhD Candidate, Makis Ampartzidis. These twinkling spheres are embryos developing on glass beads. In order to understand changes in the embryo that may lead to developmental conditions in babies, like spina bifida, researchers must mimic the changing shape of organs. This image shows how cells that develop into the brain and spinal cord, called neuroepithelial cells, grow on beads and mimic the curved shape of the head region.

  • A grey, transparent, outline of the human brain is pictured. Within the brain a colourful bundle of nerve fibres, blue, purple, red and yellow, is present from the base of the brain through the centre. To the right of the bundle is a yellow tumour, which is around one fifth of the size of the brain.

    ‘Neuron bundle and brain tumour’ was submitted by UCL GOS ICH PhD Candidate, Fiona Young. This image is a visualisation of the interaction between a brain tumour (orange) and a bundle of nerve fibres made from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The watercolour-stained ‘bundle’ shows the pathway that carries signals from the brain to the spinal cord, to control movement on the right side of the body. It was created using using diffusion MRI and a new image processing technique that will hopefully make it easier and faster for neurosurgical teams to use MRI to improve surgical outcomes, even without highly specialist MRI skills.

  • On the left, covering two thirds of the image sits a green cluster of cells on a black background. These create an overall pooling, or globular effect. These have green outlines and blue dots within. In the centre there is a large blue cluster.

    ‘The polarity proteins that governs cells maintenance and integrity’ was entered by UCL GOS ICH PhD Student, Sara Anuar. This luminescent pool of blue and greens shows how a specific protein (green) is involved in the maintenance of the shape and structure of cells in the body. This is known as cell polarity. This protein is used to study the development of the brain in zebrafish. Researchers hope that by studying this protein they may be able to understand how abnormal signalling may contribute to autosomal recessive primary microcephaly (MCPH), a rare genetic condition where children are born with a smaller head size than normal. Models like these in zebrafish allow researchers to study the developing brain in a way that is not possible directly in patients, and means they are able to better understand how changes at early stages of development impact children once they are born.

  • A portrait image with a grid of 16 images. Each image shows a X-ray of different wrists, and some hand bones, at different angles. Within each small image there is a L or R to signify left or right wrist. There is also a small rectangular box with the text 'fracture' on some of the images which identify a fracture. On the bottom row, one from the right, there is also metal identified with a purple box and text that says 'metal 0.9', and a small brown box that says 'periostealreact'.

    ‘Artificial Intelligence Detection of Wrist Fractures’ was submitted by PhD Student, Cato Pauling. The image shows a collage of X-rays of children who have potentially broken bones in their wrist. The boxes in some of the images highlight abnormalities in these X-rays picked up by artificial intelligence (AI) programmes. Trained AI programmes have the potential to spot fractures like a radiologist, but in milliseconds! Combining the expertise of trained healthcare professionals and powerful AI programmes could reduce the number of missed fractures and ensure children get the right treatment quickly.

  • At the centre of a black background is a network of red branching tubes extending from the bottom left of the image to the top centre. These are approximately ten circular discs, of different sizes, surrounding these tubes.

    ‘Modern Art in Kidney Biology’ was entered by UCL GOS ICH Doctoral Researcher, Eva-Maria Funk. This image shows the lymphatic system of an adult mouse kidney, which is very similar to in humans. The lymphatics are a draining network that help the body remove unwanted fluids and molecules from tissue, like those that cause inflammation. The system is also vital for the movement of immune cells throughout our body. This was taken as part of research to understand how a certain protein is turned on and off across this system within the kidney and how that may impact inflammation in kidney disease.

  • The text 'a Closer Look at RESEARCH' sits to the bottom right of a black and white drawing of a magnifying glass. The magnifying glass is filled with drawings (in a clockwise direction from the top): laboratory equipment, chromosomes, a patient on a hospital bed, a brain, bacterial cells, charts, DNA, a pencil, a heart, vaccine syringe, viral cells, and prescription drugs. Text around the outside border of the magnifying glass reads 'HYPOTHESIZE', 'SUCCESS', 'NOVEL', 'INVESTIGATE', 'EXCEL', 'INNOVATE', 'STRIVE', 'FUTURE', 'HELP', 'DETERMINED', 'PASSION', 'CARE'.

    ‘A Closer Look at Research’ was entered by GOSH Senior Clinical Research Nurse, Jade Sugars. This illustration takes a closer look at what is involved in development and innovation in healthcare. Research is only possible through the passion, hard work and expertise of everyone involved. It represents the idea that so many teams and individuals come together to make research a success and help change the lives of our children and young people.

  • Multiple nerve cells of varying sizes are pictured in red on a black background. Within each cell there is a circular shaped nucleus which is green and blue.

    'Astrocytes, the beautiful stars of the central nervous system’ was submitted by UCL GOS ICH Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dr Jenny Lange. Pictured here are astrocyte cells (red), named because of their star-like shape, these cells play an important role in the brain alongside nerve cells. These astrocytes were grown from stem cells, that were taken from a young patient with genetic epilepsy. Scientists can use cells like these, grown from stem cells, to understand how astrocytes from patients with epilepsy differ from those from those without epilepsy.

  • There is a large circle within a square frame. Within the circle are many irregular green shapes and lines. At the top and bottom of the image are two shapes outlined by pink lines, with grey line towards the centre, and a large white space in the centre.

    'Gaseous exchange’ was entered by GOSH Biomedical Scientist, Lucien Bonfante. Resembling the cratered surface of a moon, this image shows a microscope image of a lung biopsy. These are used regularly at GOSH to diagnose airway diseases like emphysema and thrombosis. The top structure shows an air sac and below it a blood vessel. Air sacs and blood vessels work in combination to allow oxygen to enter the blood and carbon dioxide to leave it. The biopsy was stained with a chemical which highlights blood vessels and the elastin protein in found in the tissue. These stains are vital in diagnostic tests to help teams identify changes the lung tissue.

Lasting impressions

We heard from some of our shortlisting panel members what these images mean to them:

These pictures made me realise how science is beautiful in every aspect.

Member of GOSH YPAG panel

These images are stunningly beautiful and vivid reminders how intricately organised the microcosm of biology is.

Professor Thomas Voit, Director of NIHR GOSH UCL Biomedical Research Centre

Being on this panel has made me so proud of the immense skill, hard work, dedication and innovation that's taking place every day at GOSH. It's a real privilege to see these amazing images and to read about the work they represent.

Geraldine Trimmer, GOSH Staff network member

Showcasing our research

All shortlisted images are being exhibited in the entrance of the Zayed Centre for Research into Rare Disease in Children (ZCR).

These are available to view from the street, along with a one-of-a-kind laboratory in a dropped floor that is home to the researchers that work on some of the most rare and complex conditions in children.

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