Diabetes Scientist To Work In Cambridge

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30478, 27 June 1964, Page 14

Diabetes Scientist To Work In Cambridge

Dr. L. E. M. Miles, a New Zealand Medical Research Council fellow at the medical unit, Princess Margaret Hospital, will leave Christchurch on Friday for Cambridge University, England, where he will work for at least a year with the aid of a grant by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. The work in which Dr. Miles has been engaged at .the medical unit, under the director (Dr. D. W. Beaven), is aimed at helping women who may be particularly prone to diabetes mellitus (the most common form of diabetes). The risk is considered high where the women have a strong family history of the condition, or where they have given birth to babies of 101 b or more. Such women were located by Dr. Miles through the records of St. Helens Hospital and of the North Canterbury Hospital Board diabetic clinic. The project was made possible by the establishment by Dr. Miles of a ready means of routine assay of plasma insulin by an immunological technique. The Canterbury Medical Research Foundation has contributed to the work by paying the salary of Dr. Miles's technical assistant, Miss J. R. Smith. Dr. Miles has written up his work as a thesis for the degree of doctor of medicine at the University of Otago. In Cambridge, where he will work under Professor F. G. Young, he will carry out investigations in much the same

field, but probably at a more fundamental level.

He will travel to Cambridge by way of North America, where he will visit medical, centres working on lines of interest to.him. He will represent the New Zealand Diabetic Association at the World Congress of Diabetes at Toronto next month.

Dr. Miles is the son of Mrs B. C; Miles and the late Mr R. H. Miles, of Fendalton. He was educated at Waitaki Boys’ High School and the University of Otago.