#LetsTalkLabs with Hannah Durrington

Laboratory or lab-based research is often the first step in research that makes a difference. However, we don’t talk enough about it, so #LetsTalkLabs!

To spark more conversations about this aspect of research, we have partnered with research advisory groups BRAG and Voice Up, people from Greater Manchester and researchers on #LetsTalkLabs, an initiative funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Manchester Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) and NIHR Manchester Clinical Research Facility (CRF).

Hannah Durrington, a researcher supported by the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre, is committed to improving the lives of people living with asthma. She leads a team of researchers who use laboratories to find better ways of diagnosing, treating and managing the condition.

In this Q&A she tells us more about her work and meeting with Simon from Socio-Economic Regeneration CIC, who is interested in understanding how laboratory research makes a difference to people with asthma.

What motivates you to do research?

I’ve always been interested in science and understanding how the human body works. Once I became a medical doctor and started to treat people with various conditions, I realised that in order to explain a disease to a patient and to understand how to treat it, I needed a really in-depth knowledge of science. Developing better treatments or new ways for people to manage their symptoms requires scientific research. I’m fortunate to be able to see patients in clinics to understand how the condition affects them and then to use laboratory-based research to pinpoint what is causing the problem. Ultimately, I believe making patients feel better comes from a real understanding of the science.

How can your work benefit people?

In Greater Manchester over 200,000 people are affected by asthma. The North West of England has one of the highest rates of emergency hospital admissions and deaths for lung conditions in the UK. This may be due to factors such as health inequalities pollution and higher rates of smoking compared to the rest of England.

Thanks to our previous research in the laboratory, we know that asthma symptoms (such as cough, tight chest or wheezing) change during the day, getting worse overnight and in the early morning. My research aims to discover why time of day is important in asthma. We hope this will lead to new treatments or patients taking current treatments at the times of day when they are more likely to be more effective.

What do you do in the laboratory?

My team and I are working on different projects. For example, one of our projects looks at the cells in our airways to understand the changes that happen in asthma and how these could be prevented. We measure the different proteins produced by these cells during asthma, to see if we can discover how they’re involved and if we could develop a treatment that would block them.

We’re also running a ‘clinical chronotherapy trial’, a type of clinical trial where researchers explore how time of day affects the way the body responds to asthma treatment. We want to understand how time of day impacts the effectiveness of steroid inhalers (a common asthma treatment). Laboratories play a key part in this because we can look in detail at blood and sputum samples from patients taking part in the trial. We are indebted to our patients for providing us with these samples, without which we would not be able to do our research.

What was it like to chat with Simon?

I really enjoyed chatting to Simon and exploring the questions he had about our research and asthma in general. It’s not something that we do every day, and it’s nice to be able to show what we do in the laboratory. As researchers, I feel we often forget that what we do is quite unusual and not accessible to everyone. What to us may be obvious, won’t be to others and I really enjoy the opportunity to share what we do in these big buildings and make research more visible.

Why are people important to your research?

Ultimately, the research we do to understand asthma aims to improve how people with the condition are treated. I feel the way we do medicine has really been changing in the past 20 years or so; it’s moved from us assuming what matters to patients, to making patients the centre of the research question. In my view, involving patients in shaping the research that we do is really important. By working with the Get Vocal on Asthma Network, we’re involving people affected by asthma from the beginning because they bring unique perspectives and tell us how the condition affects them. This really helps us understand where we should focus our efforts and how we best share our findings with others.

Find out more about how laboratory-based research makes a difference on Facebook and X. Visit our opportunities page to find out how you can have your say in research and benefit people in the future.