Derek Mann

@damann1.bsky.social

Scientist, mentor, husband, father, grandfather, rugby fan, Man Utd supporter, cook, grateful cancer survivor researching cancer immunology.

As Newcastle University’s Professor of Hepatology, I am honoured and extremely proud to be a contributor to its world top 10 ranking in Gastroenterology and Hepatology 👊

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The NU Conference was a big success with a superb plenary from Ram DasGupta (CRUK Scotland). Prizes for talks - J Dishington (1st) and H Stewart; flash talks - E Woodward (1st), L Taylor (2nd); posters - E Hackney (1st), K Papa (2nd). Congrats and to all presenters for giving us a memorable day!

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Next up, our talented PhD student Keara, who was super busy at her poster on development of a tumour slice screening platform for discovery of liver cancer drug targets.

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Dr Amy Collins is busy at her poster on modelling hepatocellular carcinoma at the 2025 EASL Liver Cancer Summit in Paris. Funding for her work from Cancer Research U.K.

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On World Cancer Day we welcome Dr Abdullah Malik to our liver cancer team. Abdullah is a talented surgeon who has won a prestigious Medical Research Council clinician scientist training fellowship to research the basis of recurrence of cancer following surgical removal of a patient’s tumour.

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In addition to my trials and tribulations with bowel cancer I also suffer from pre-cancerous lesions on the skin around my eyes. So now have a new pair of wraparound prescription shades to offer a better degree of protection. Not sure if I look more like The Terminator or a character from The Matrix

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Our brain is not a computer “Why does the brain need billions of neurons to process 10bits/sec? Why can we only think about one thing at a time?” Fascinating paper makes me wonder if aspects of neurodivergence (e.g. ADHD) are the brain trying to be a little faster? arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234

The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

This article is about the neural conundrum behind the slowness of human behavior. The information throughput of a human being is about 10 bits/s. In comparison, our sensory systems gather data at ~10^...

arxiv.org

What is hopefully the final part of my treatment for bowel cancer done. Currently in the fantastic Newcastle NHS Trust Freeman Hospital recovering from surgery to reverse my ileostomy. Operation done 6 months after my first one that removed the tumour. Onwards and Upwards 😊