Dr David Gaze
Dr David Gaze completed both Undergraduate and Postgraduate degrees in West Yorkshire followed by a PhD in Clinical Biochemistry in London, United Kingdom. He is currently Senior Lecturer in Chemical Pathology; Director of Employability in the School of Life Science and Course Leader for MSc Biomedical Science at the University of Westminster. Honorary Cardiac Research Scientist within the Department of Chemical Pathology, Clinical Blood Sciences at St George’s Hospital and Medical School, London.
Dr Gaze has authored and co-authored in excess of 150 peer reviewed papers and over 200 abstracts, as well as presented at over 50 internationally invited conferences. He has contributed six book chapters on Cardiovascular disease and biomarkers as well as writing a textbook on cardiac troponin. He is a peer reviewer of 25 medical journals.
Dr Gaze is a member of the Royal Society of Medicine of London; The Association for Clinical Biochemistry, of which he chairs the Clinical Sciences Review Committee for the Annals of Clinical Biochemistry. He is also a member of the American Association of Clinical Chemistry; Institute of Biomedical Sciences; Institute of Biology; European Society of Pathology; The Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland and associate member of the Royal Institution of London.
Dr Gaze and colleagues have won a number of awards including two distinguished Abstract awards from the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry as well as Diploma for Oral Presentation regarding D-dimer, natriuretic peptide and cardiac troponin in dialysis patients presented at the 17th IFCC-FESCC European Congress of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine and the 60th National congress of the Netherlands Society of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine in Amsterdam in 2007.
Dr Gaze is currently researching in the area of Cardiovascular Biology. He has an interest in assay utilisation for the laboratory diagnosis of the acute coronary syndromes. In particular proteins of the troponin complex located within cardiomyocytes and natriuretic peptide hormones released from ‘stretched’ myocytes as a result of hypertrophy in chronic heart failure. Dr Gaze has a special interest in cardiovascular pathophysiology in patients with renal failure, especially those who develop end stage chronic kidney disease, requiring dialysis renal replacement therapy.
Dr Gaze has many close collaborations with manufacturers in the in vitro diagnostics industry and has developed a number of immunoassays for the detection of cardiac troponin. He is interested in test utilisation within the National Health Service and has investigated the use of point of care (near patient testing) for cardiac biomarkers in dedicated settings such as the emergency department and coronary and intensive care.
Dr Gaze has an interest in exercise induced cardiac dysfunction and has collaborated with colleagues at the English Institute of Sport, High Wickham; Cardiff Metropolitan University and Liverpool John Moore's University to investigate adaptive physiological responses to exercise stimuli.
For a number of years Dr Gaze has been interested in novel biochemical markers of ischemia, the final common pathway to cardiac cell necrosis and myocardial infarction (heart attack) studying the marker Ischemia Modified Albumin (IMA). Human serum albumin undergoes a transient change in structure during ischemia creating an interim form of albumin. This can be measured indirectly spectrophotometrically. The cumulative result of these clinical studies has lead to the approval of the assay for routine clinical use by the United States Food and Drug Association (FDA) and CE marking in Europe Following on from the success of IMA which lacks cardiospecificity, Dr Gaze has developed a patented novel cardiac ischemia biomarker. This protein expressed in cardiac myocytes may be a candidate target for the development of a novel assay for cardiac ischemia.
In collaboration with the Zoological Society of London (London Zoo), Chester, Paignton and Twycross Zoos and cardiac physiologists from Cardiff Metropolitan University, Dr Gaze is working with the European Great Ape Heart Project comparing both structural cardiac physiology and biochemical parameters between free and captive apes and potential evolutionary changes which may predispose humans to cardiovascular heart disease.
