Victoria McGilligan is a Lecturer in Personalised Medicine with an interest in the inflammatory aspects of cardiovascular disease. Dr McGilligan is the academic lead for the Cardiovascular Research and Improvement Science Centre (CardioRISC). This centre originates from Northern Ireland Centre for Stratified Medicine (NICSM), at the C-TRIC research site of Altnagelvin hospital. CardioRISC was set up to IMPROVE Cardiovascular Health through the integration of Digital Cardiology and Personalised Medicine. Dr McGilligan’s research focuses on the development of novel biological therapeutics for coronary artery disease and other inflammatory diseases. She is inventor of IntraCell a drug delivery technology for larger molecules. She previously worked for industrial and pharmaceutical companies in the areas of therapy and point of care test development. Victoria completed a postdoctoral training fellowship at Harvard Medical School and was awarded the Cora Verhagen Immunology prize for presentation of her findings there in relation to the NLRP3 Inflammasome. This key regulator of the immune system is still a focus of Victoria’s work and is central to PhD projects which she supervises.

Current clinical research projects led by Dr McGilligan involve the recruitment of 1200 CVD patients to investigate novel biomarkers and algorithms to predict disease risk. Additionally she is PI for a project that aims to better stratify patients undergoing CT angiography using machine learning approaches combined with 3D modelling. 

She currently supervises two PhD students working on computational cardiovascular projects.  The first aims to improve clinical decision making and patient safety by improving electrocardiogram interpretation and the second aims to develop novel health informatics systems to improve triage of patients for ST-Elevated Myocardial Infarction.

Her teaching duties include co-ordinating the Inflammatory and Immunological disease undergraduate module in personalised medicine. She also co-ordinates two modules on the postgraduate personalised medicine course; Clinical Trial Design and Patient Recruitment and the Clinical Governance and Research Ethics modules. 

She has published her research works in leading journals across several fields and has mentored several postdoctoral researchers and Ph.D. students working on cardiovascular and other related research projects, which are supported by multiple research grants (as PI or Co-I) including those sponsored by industry and European funding.

She is inventor of several diagnostic/therapeutic products with several invention disclosures and 3 patents currently filed. Victoria is founder of Athlas therapeutics a new start up company which focuses on the development of biological therapeutics for inflammatory disease. 

Development of biological therapies and diagnostic assays for coronary artery disease; Inflammatory pathways specifically the NLRP3 Inflammasome.

2021
Iftikhar A, Bond R, Mcgilligan V, Leslie SJ, Knoery C, Shand J, Ramsewak A, Sharma D, McShane A, Rjoob K, Peace A. Human-Computer Agreement of Electrocardiogram Interpretation for Patients Referred to and Declined for Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention: Retrospective Data Analysis Study. JMIR Med Inform. 2021;9(3):e24188.

Rjoob K, Bond R, Finlay D, McGilligan V, J Leslie S, Rababah A, Iftikhar A, Guldenring D, Knoery C, McShane A, Peace AReliable Deep Learning-Based Detection of Misplaced Chest Electrodes During Electrocardiogram Recording: Algorithm Development and Validation. JMIR Med Inform. 2021;;9(4):e25347

2020
Iftikhar A, Bond RR, McGilligan V, Leslie SJ, McShane A, Knoery C, Rjoob K, Peace A. Computational time series analysis of patient referrals to a primary percutaneous coronary intervention service. Health Informatics J. 2020;26(3):2222-2236.

Knoery CR, Heaton J, Polson R, Bond R, Iftikhar A, Rjoob K, McGilligan V, Peace A, Leslie SJ. Systematic Review of Clinical Decision Support Systems for Prehospital Acute Coronary Syndrome Identification. Crit Pathw Cardiol. 2020;19(3):119-125.

2019
McGilligan VE, et al. An exploratory analysis investigating blood protein biomarkers to augment ECG interpretation of AMI. J Electrocardiol 2019; 57S:S92-S97.

Donnelly S, et al. The NLRP3 Inflammasome as a promising target for Coronary Artery Disease: Current and Pipeline NLRP3 Inhibitors. Online Journal of Cardiovascular Research 2019;3,1.

Fioravanti A, et al. Exploring the involvement of NLRP3 and Il-1ß in osteoarthritis of the hand: results from a pilot study. Mediators of Inflammation 2019: 2363460.

2018
Parton A, et al. New models of atherosclerosis and multi-drug therapeutic interventions. Bioinformatics. 2018 35(14):2449-2457

2017
Chemaly M, et al. Role of tumour necrosis factor alpha converting enzyme (TACE/ADAM17)and associated proteins in coronary artery disease and cardiac events. Arch Cardiovasc Dis. 2017;110(12):700.

2013
McGilligan VE, et al. Staphylococcus aureus Activates the NLRP3 Inflammasome in Human and Rat Conjunctival Goblet Cells. PLoS One, 2013; ;8(9):e74010. 

HSCNI R&D. V McGilligan, U Power, K Mills. InflaTMP: Development of a dual inhibitor targeting NLRP3 and TMPRSS2 for COVID-19.  March 2021 - April 2022. £190,000  

DfE and SFI. V McGilligan, K Mills. InflaTMP: Development of a dual inhibitor targeting NLRP3 and TMPRSS2 for COVID-19. November 2020 - June 2022. £566,000.

Santen Pharmaceuticals. V McGilligan, M Gregory-Ksander. Development of a novel inhibitor for inflammatory disease.  March 2010 - Feb 2021. £245,321,  

Research to Prevent Blindness - International Collaborators Award.  V McGilligan, M Gregory-Ksander. A novel inhibitor for inflammatory disease, testing InflaMab in Glaucoma.  Aug 2019-Dec 2021. £60,177.  

Invest NI.  V McGilligan. Development of a novel inhibitor for inflammatory disease.  Nov 2018 - Dec 2021.  £154k  

Current
Shauna Donnelly - InflaTmP: A novel combination anti-inflammatory and anti-viral biotherapeutic for COVID-19 targeting the NLRP3 inflammasome and TMPRSS2 in cardiovascular disease.
Sophie Coyle - Development of a novel inhibitor for Inflammatory Disease
Aleeha Iftikhar - Interactive technology to aid decision making in cardiac care
Khaled Rjoob - improving the interpretation of the 12-lead electrocardiogram and clinical decision making in cardiology
Guangran Guo - Targeting senescence as a therapy for atrial fibrillation.

Former 
Dr Melody Chemaly - Investigating Novel Biomarkers for Risk Stratification in Cardiovascular Disease (completed 2017)
Dr Andrew Parton - Computational modelling of atherosclerosis (completed 2017) 

Victoria is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She currently serves as lecturer on the BSc and MSc degrees in Personalised Medicine.

Module coordinator
BIO133 - Inflammatory and Immunological Disease (BSc Personalised Medicine)
BIO827 - Clinical Governance, Regulatory processes and ethics (MSc Personalised Medicine)
BIO829 - Clinical trial design and patient recruitment (MSc Personalised Medicine)
Study Skills for 1st years (BSc Personalised Medicine)

Lecturer/Tutor
BIO349 - Cellular and Molecular Pathology (BSc Stratified Medicine)
BMS712 - Foundation in Clinical Medicine and Pharmacology (PgDip Physician Associates Course)

BIO133 - Inflammatory and Immunological Disease (BSc Personalised Medicine)
BIO827 - Clinical Governance, Regulatory processes and ethics (MSc Personalised Medicine)
BIO829 - Clinical trial design and patient recruitment (MSc Personalised Medicine)
Study Skills for 1st years (BSc Personalised Medicine)

Moderator/Examiner
BIO537 - Clinical or Fundamental Research Design (BSc Stratified Medicine)
BIO540 - Clinical Research Project (BSc Stratified Medicine)
BIO833 - Research Project (MSc Stratified Medicine)
BIO354 - Ethics, regulatory processes and clinical trial design
BMS505 - Investigative project (BSc Stratified Medicine)
BMS809 - Research Project (MSc Biomedical Science)
BIO509 - Research Studies (DL MSc Biomedical Science).