The 2025 CPM Annual Lecture was given by Philip Ball, at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, on Thursday 13th February. Philip Ball is a freelance writer and broadcaster, and was an editor at Nature for more than twenty years. He writes regularly in the scientific and popular media and has written many books on the interactions of the sciences, the arts, and wider culture, including H2O: A Biography of Water, Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour, The Music Instinct, and How Life Works. His book Critical Mass won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. Philip was the 2022 recipient of the Royal Society’s Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal for contributions to the history, philosophy or social roles of science. He trained as a chemist at the University of Oxford and as a physicist at the University of Bristol.

The 2025 CPM Annual Lecture was given by Philip Ball, at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, on Thursday 13th February. Philip Ball is a freelance writer and broadcaster, and was an editor at Nature for more than twenty years. He writes regularly in the scientific and popular media and has written many books on the interactions of the sciences, the arts, and wider culture, including H2O: A Biography of Water, Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour, The Music Instinct, and How Life Works. His book Critical Mass won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. Philip was the 2022 recipient of the Royal Society’s Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal for contributions to the history, philosophy or social roles of science. He trained as a chemist at the University of Oxford and as a physicist at the University of Bristol.

Developments in whole genome sequencing technologies have catalysed incredible progress in the diagnosis of rare disease and the discovery of novel disease-associated genes. However, large-scale sequencing of population cohorts has revealed that many healthy individuals carry the same disease-causing variants as patients. The extent of this incomplete penetrance in individuals not ascertained on the basis of a family history or clinical diagnosis is neither well understood nor widely appreciated. In this talk, Professor Caroline Wright, Professor of Genomic Medicine at the Department of Clinical and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Exeter, outlines recent research into penetrance of different diseases across different populations, and discusses the broader implications of these findings for genomic screening. This is the 2024 Dr Stanley Ho Memorial Lecture, in collaboration with the Oxford Martin School, and it took place on 29 May 2024.

Developments in whole genome sequencing technologies have catalysed incredible progress in the diagnosis of rare disease and the discovery of novel disease-associated genes. However, large-scale sequencing of population cohorts has revealed that many healthy individuals carry the same disease-causing variants as patients. The extent of this incomplete penetrance in individuals not ascertained on the basis of a family history or clinical diagnosis is neither well understood nor widely appreciated. In this talk, Professor Caroline Wright, Professor of Genomic Medicine at the Department of Clinical and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Exeter, outlines recent research into penetrance of different diseases across different populations, and discusses the broader implications of these findings for genomic screening. This is the 2024 Dr Stanley Ho Memorial Lecture, in collaboration with the Oxford Martin School, and it took place on 29 May 2024.

Professor Sir John Burn gave the 2024 CPM Annual Lecture at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford on Tuesday 26th March. Professor Sir John Burn obtained a first class honours degree in human genetics and an MD with distinction from Newcastle University, where he has been Professor of Clinical Genetics since 1991. He was appointed as a consultant specialist in Newcastle in 1984 and led the regional NHS Genetics Service for 20 years. He helped to create the Millennium Landmark Centre for Life, which houses an education, and science centre alongside NHS regional genetics and fertility services and University research. He is chair of the Newcastle based DNA device company QuantuMDx Ltd. He was knighted in 2010 and chosen as one of the first 20 ‘local heroes’ to have a brass plaque on Newcastle Quayside in 2014. He is a Trustee of the European Hereditary Tumour Group, UNESCO NGO Global Variome and HUGO (the Human Genome Organisation) London. He is Vice President of HUGO international. Former roles include founding Chair the UK Cancer Genetics Group (1997-2003) and of the International Society for Gastrointestinal Hereditary Tumours (InSiGHT 2003-5), President of the European Society of Human Genetics (2006-2007), Chair of the British Society for Genetic Medicine (2011-2013), Lead Clinician, Northern Strategic Health Authority (2010-2014), Non-executive Director NHS England (2014-2018) and Chair of Newcastle Hospitals (2017 -2023). He leads the Cancer Prevention Programme research group at Newcastle University; CAPP2, an RCT in 16 countries, showed that aspirin reduces by half the risk of colorectal cancer in Lynch syndrome (Burn et al Lancet 2020) and resistant starch supplements reduce the risk of other LS cancers by more than half (Mathers et al Cancer Prev Research 2022).

Professor Sir John Burn gave the 2024 CPM Annual Lecture at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford on Tuesday 26th March. Professor Sir John Burn obtained a first class honours degree in human genetics and an MD with distinction from Newcastle University, where he has been Professor of Clinical Genetics since 1991. He was appointed as a consultant specialist in Newcastle in 1984 and led the regional NHS Genetics Service for 20 years. He helped to create the Millennium Landmark Centre for Life, which houses an education, and science centre alongside NHS regional genetics and fertility services and University research. He is chair of the Newcastle based DNA device company QuantuMDx Ltd. He was knighted in 2010 and chosen as one of the first 20 ‘local heroes’ to have a brass plaque on Newcastle Quayside in 2014. He is a Trustee of the European Hereditary Tumour Group, UNESCO NGO Global Variome and HUGO (the Human Genome Organisation) London. He is Vice President of HUGO international. Former roles include founding Chair the UK Cancer Genetics Group (1997-2003) and of the International Society for Gastrointestinal Hereditary Tumours (InSiGHT 2003-5), President of the European Society of Human Genetics (2006-2007), Chair of the British Society for Genetic Medicine (2011-2013), Lead Clinician, Northern Strategic Health Authority (2010-2014), Non-executive Director NHS England (2014-2018) and Chair of Newcastle Hospitals (2017 -2023). He leads the Cancer Prevention Programme research group at Newcastle University; CAPP2, an RCT in 16 countries, showed that aspirin reduces by half the risk of colorectal cancer in Lynch syndrome (Burn et al Lancet 2020) and resistant starch supplements reduce the risk of other LS cancers by more than half (Mathers et al Cancer Prev Research 2022).

Professor Mary Dixon Woods gave the 2023 CPM Annual Lecture on 27th April 2023. This event took place at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. Mary Dixon-Woods is Director of THIS Institute and The Health Foundation Professor of Healthcare Improvement Studies in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge. She is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences, an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. A Professorial Fellow at Homerton College, Cambridge, Mary is also an NIHR Senior Investigator. Mary served on England’s National Advisory Group on the Safety of Patients in England, which produced the Berwick report in 2013. She also served on the review of information technology in the NHS led by Professor Bob Wachter, which reported in 2016. She was a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator 2012-2019. Mary was the Harveian Orator for the Royal College of Physicians in 2018, the 500th anniversary of the College’s founding. She is a member of the BMJ’s international advisory board. Research Interests Mary’s programme of research is concerned with generating a high quality evidence-base to support improvement in the organisation, quality and safety of healthcare. Characteristically using mixed-methods approaches, her work focuses on evaluation of quality and safety improvement interventions and programmes, culture and behaviour in health systems, and regulation and governance of health research and care. She has a special interest in methodological innovation in the study of healthcare improvement.

Professor Mary Dixon Woods gave the 2023 CPM Annual Lecture on 27th April 2023. This event took place at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. Mary Dixon-Woods is Director of THIS Institute and The Health Foundation Professor of Healthcare Improvement Studies in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge. She is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences, an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. A Professorial Fellow at Homerton College, Cambridge, Mary is also an NIHR Senior Investigator. Mary served on England’s National Advisory Group on the Safety of Patients in England, which produced the Berwick report in 2013. She also served on the review of information technology in the NHS led by Professor Bob Wachter, which reported in 2016. She was a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator 2012-2019. Mary was the Harveian Orator for the Royal College of Physicians in 2018, the 500th anniversary of the College’s founding. She is a member of the BMJ’s international advisory board. Research Interests Mary’s programme of research is concerned with generating a high quality evidence-base to support improvement in the organisation, quality and safety of healthcare. Characteristically using mixed-methods approaches, her work focuses on evaluation of quality and safety improvement interventions and programmes, culture and behaviour in health systems, and regulation and governance of health research and care. She has a special interest in methodological innovation in the study of healthcare improvement.

Just as people and populations are diverse – motivating ideas of personalised medicine, nerve cells – or neurons – of the brain are immensely diverse in their types and “individual” circuits that become diseased or damaged in humans. This lecture considers newly accessible molecular routes to more specific future therapies. The long-term goals of the research to be discussed in this Stanley Ho Memorial Lecture are to understand, at a “subcellular” molecular level, controls over the initial growth – the “development” – and diversity of cerebral cortex function-specific circuitry, and diversity of mature function. The work aims to identify causes, mechanisms, and thus potential “circuit-customised” therapeutic approaches to developmental, neuropsychiatric and degenerative disease, and to elucidate and potentially overcome blocks to brain and spinal cord regeneration in disorders like spinal cord injury. The specificity, modification, and function of quite diverse brain circuitry underlies how the brain-nervous system senses, integrates, moves the body, thinks, functions with precision, malfunctions with specificity in disease, degenerates with circuit specificity, might be regenerated, and/or might be better modeled in the laboratory. However, many relevant aspects of this neuronal circuit diversity and distinctness have been inaccessible in multiple core aspects until quite recently. Understanding what actually implements and maintains circuit specificity is a key issue regarding childhood developmental nervous system abnormalities and disease, proper function vs. dysfunction in neuropsychiatric disorders, selective neuron type vulnerability of degeneration (e.g. in motor neuron disease (MND-ALS), Huntington’s, Parkinson’s diseases), regeneration (or typical lack thereof) for spinal cord injury, and investigations of disease using human pluripotent stem cell (hiPS)-derived neurons. Professor Jeffrey D. Macklis’ talk will consider possibilities of taking the idea of “personalised medicine”- tailored to an individual based on individual information – in a complementary direction– tailoring therapies to specific diseased or damaged brain circuitry. This is the Dr Stanley Ho Memorial Lecture organised by the Oxford Martin School, Oxford Martin Programme on 3D Printing for Brain Repair and the Centre for Personalised Medicine.

Just as people and populations are diverse – motivating ideas of personalised medicine, nerve cells – or neurons – of the brain are immensely diverse in their types and “individual” circuits that become diseased or damaged in humans. This lecture considers newly accessible molecular routes to more specific future therapies. The long-term goals of the research to be discussed in this Stanley Ho Memorial Lecture are to understand, at a “subcellular” molecular level, controls over the initial growth – the “development” – and diversity of cerebral cortex function-specific circuitry, and diversity of mature function. The work aims to identify causes, mechanisms, and thus potential “circuit-customised” therapeutic approaches to developmental, neuropsychiatric and degenerative disease, and to elucidate and potentially overcome blocks to brain and spinal cord regeneration in disorders like spinal cord injury. The specificity, modification, and function of quite diverse brain circuitry underlies how the brain-nervous system senses, integrates, moves the body, thinks, functions with precision, malfunctions with specificity in disease, degenerates with circuit specificity, might be regenerated, and/or might be better modeled in the laboratory. However, many relevant aspects of this neuronal circuit diversity and distinctness have been inaccessible in multiple core aspects until quite recently. Understanding what actually implements and maintains circuit specificity is a key issue regarding childhood developmental nervous system abnormalities and disease, proper function vs. dysfunction in neuropsychiatric disorders, selective neuron type vulnerability of degeneration (e.g. in motor neuron disease (MND-ALS), Huntington’s, Parkinson’s diseases), regeneration (or typical lack thereof) for spinal cord injury, and investigations of disease using human pluripotent stem cell (hiPS)-derived neurons. Professor Jeffrey D. Macklis’ talk will consider possibilities of taking the idea of “personalised medicine”- tailored to an individual based on individual information – in a complementary direction– tailoring therapies to specific diseased or damaged brain circuitry. This is the Dr Stanley Ho Memorial Lecture organised by the Oxford Martin School, Oxford Martin Programme on 3D Printing for Brain Repair and the Centre for Personalised Medicine.