An Ambassador Audience with Professor Paul Martin

The Scar Free Foundation Programme of Wound Healing Research at the University of Bristol is the first study of its kind in the world - combining large scale population health data with model organism studies using zebrafish to analyse the role that genes play in wound repair and scar formation.

Professor Paul Martin and his team presented to our Ambassadors, discussing the progress they have made so far on this important scarring research – and Ambassadors feeding back on their personal experiences of scarring and how the research will help future generations.

Professor Martin explained how the research at The University of Bristol is helping towards our mission of scar free healing.

The ALSPAC (Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children) is a Bristol cohort of over 14,000 mothers who, along with their children and partners, have been followed up intensively over two decades since being recruited to the study in the early 90s. The women and their babies have had blood samples taken so they can be genotyped in the lab. The scientists have been using ALSPAC to investigate the reasoning behind some women having smaller BCG scars than others.

With the information from ALSPAC, Professor Martin and his team are looking for genes that are associated with the mothers who have less of a scar from the BCG jab. So far, the team have identified the LGR4 gene which has been associated with the mothers who have less jab scarring than other women with the same jab. The LG4 gene is taken and mutated for use with the zebrafish to investigate whether the heads up from the human data is valid – the team want to find out whether the LGR4 gene is really associated with scarring.