The British Heart Foundation (BHF) has revealed the winners of its annual ‘Reflections of Research’ photography competition. This year's winner, titled ‘Explosive beginnings’, was taken by Courtney Williams, a Masters student and PhD candidate at Leeds University and shows a close-up snapshot of the moment endothelial cells the cells that line the inside surface of blood vessels begin to ‘sprout’, a process which adds entirely new blood vessels to the existing network.
The runner-up image came from Matt MacGregor Sharp, a PhD student at the University of Southampton and shows an artery at the surface of a rat’s brain, taken with a powerful scanning electron microscope. These ‘subarachnoid vessels’ supply blood to the brain and also act as a drain to remove toxic waste products. Macgregor’s team are trying to show that failure to remove waste by these vessels is one of the underlying causes of vascular dementia.
