探花直播 of Cambridge - Bertie Gottgens

Wellcome awards Cambridge 拢18 million for two Discovery Research Platforms

cjb250 — Wed, 03 May 2023 23:01:48 +0000

探花直播Discovery Research Platforms (DRPs) will be home to transformative research environments that empower researchers to overcome specific barriers holding back progress in their fields of research. They aim to accelerate research for the benefit of the wider global research community, with researchers and teams developing new tools, knowledge and capabilities to help unlock new findings about life, health and wellbeing.

Michael Dunn, Director of Discovery Research at Wellcome, said: 鈥淒iscovery research is essential to advancing our ability to understand and improve health. But in addition to researchers鈥� bold and imaginative ideas, we know that new tools, methods and capabilities are also needed to unlock new avenues of research that can disrupt and transform the research landscape globally.鈥�

探花直播two Cambridge DRPs, which will receive 拢9million each over seven years, are:

探花直播Discovery Research Platform for Tissue Scale Biology 鈥� which seeks to move stem cell biology to the tissue and organ scale of research, creating a new network of local and international researchers to enable strategies that capitalise on new in vitro models to develop better treatments for human patients.

Professor Bertie Gottgens, Director of the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, said: "I am delighted that Wellcome will support our ambition to build a new Discovery Research Platform to provide international leadership for Tissue Scale Biology.

鈥淥ur vision for this platform resulted from extensive discussions across the wider Cambridge Stem Cell community and the formation of a highly interdisciplinary team connecting the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute with the West Cambridge Engineering/Technology community. It also incorporates exciting new training partnerships with Anglia Ruskin 探花直播 and the Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology, to help us fill critical skills shortages and widen participation across Cambridge."

探花直播Discovery Research Platform for Integrating Metabolic and Endocrine Science 鈥� which aims to address practical barriers preventing data integration across metabolic and endocrine science, investigate how hormones control metabolic processes and how these can go wrong in disorders such as obesity, diabetes and cachexia, and create tools to facilitate global access to this data. 探花直播Platform will encompass research on molecules, cells and model organisms but will have a major focus on discovery science in human participants, patients and populations.

探花直播funding will sustain key technological platforms and the highly-trained staff needed to support these. It will also underpin partnerships with research centres across the UK as well as in Germany and Denmark, all of which will provide new opportunities for training.

探花直播Platform will have a major focus on the broad dissemination of integrated data and the creation of tools to facilitate access by the global community. 探花直播award will also accelerate the team鈥檚 drive to make transformational changes to research culture with new initiatives in widening access and open science reinforced by a new programme of research into the culture of biomedical science, in collaboration with Dr Yeun Joon Kim, Associate Professor at the Cambridge Judge Business School.

Professor Sir Stephen O鈥橰ahilly, Co-Director at the Wellcome-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science and Director of the MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit, said: 鈥淲ellcome鈥檚 support of our scientists鈥� research in metabolism and endocrinology, and of the technological platforms that underpin it, has been critically important to the discoveries we have made and the translation of that research into聽improvements in health. This new award will allow us to build on those achievements and deliver more ground-breaking science in a manner that emphasises openness, diversity and a spirit of collaboration.鈥�

Cambridge has been awarded two of Wellcome鈥檚 eight new Discovery Research Platforms, the global charitable foundation announced today.

Odra Noel

Acinar tissue - 探花直播flowers of diabetes

探花直播text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright 漏探花直播 of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified.聽 All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways 鈥� as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Eight Cambridge researchers elected as members of the European Molecular Biology Organisation

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 13:00:56 +0000

EMBO Membership honours distinguished scientists who have made outstanding contributions to the life sciences, including 88 Nobel Laureates. It is an international organisation of life scientists, which has more than 1800 members elected by peers.

探花直播newly elected Cambridge researchers are:

Professor Bertie G枚ttgens, Professor of Molecular Haematology, Deputy Director of the Wellcome MRC Stem Cell Institute, and a member of the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Cambridge Centre Haematological Malignancies Programme. Bertie鈥檚 research group studies how transcription factor networks control the function of blood stem cells, and how mutations that perturb these networks cause leukaemia.

G枚ttgens聽said:"This honour is very much a reflection of the dedicated work and collective effort of all members of my research group over the years. Rather fittingly, I kick-started my independent career with a paper in an EMBO Journal. Becoming an EMBO member therefore represents a very special milestone to me."

Professor Kathryn Lilley, Director of the Cambridge Centre for Proteomics, Department of Biochemistry, Milner Therapeutics Institute, and a member of the CRUK Cambridge Centre Cell and Molecular Biology Programme. Kathryn鈥檚 research aims to interrogate how the functional proteome correlates with complexity.聽

Lilley said: 鈥淚 feel extremely honoured to have been elected as a member of EMBO by my peers, which also recognizes the efforts and achievements on my fabulous research group members and numerous collaborators both past and present.鈥�

Dr Serena Nik-Zainal, a CRUK Advanced Clinician Scientist at the 探花直播鈥檚 MRC Cancer Unit, and Honorary Consultant in Clinical Genetics at Addenbrooke鈥檚 Hospital. Serena鈥檚 research combines computational and experimental approaches to understand cellular changes and mutational processes that lead to cancer and age-related disorders.

Nik-Zainal聽said: 鈥淚t鈥檚 a great honour to become a member of EMBO, opening up opportunities for exploring new interactions with colleagues through Europe and around the world.鈥�

Professor Giles Oldroyd FRS, Russell R Geiger Professor of Crop Science at the Sainsbury Laboratory and Director of the Crop Science Centre. Giles is leading an international programme of research that attempts to achieve more equitable and sustainable agriculture through the enhanced use of beneficial microbial associations.聽聽

Oldroyd聽said: 鈥淚 have long admired the work that EMBO does to strengthen and coordinate science across Europe and it is an honour to now be a part of this prestigious European fellowship of biologists.鈥�

Professor Uta Paszkowski, Professor of Plant Molecular Genetics at the Department of Plant Sciences. Uta leads the Cereal Symbiosis Group, which investigates the molecular mechanisms underlying formation and functioning of arbuscular mycorrhizal symbioses (beneficial interactions between roots of land plants and soil fungi) in rice and maize.

Paszkowski said: 鈥淎cross the organisations supporting the Life Sciences, EMBO stands out by its varied activities to advance science through facilitating knowledge exchange and career development. I am immensely honoured to be elected as a member.鈥�

Professor Anna Philpott, Head of the School of Biological Sciences, Professor of Cancer and Developmental Biology, and member of the CRUK Cambridge Centre Paediatric Cancer Programme. Anna鈥檚 research group at the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute studies the balance between proliferation and differentiation during development and cancer, using a range of models.聽聽

Philpott said: 鈥淚 am delighted to be invited to join an organisation that has done so much for European science.鈥�

Dr Chris Tate, research leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. 探花直播research in Chris鈥� lab focusses on understanding the structure and function of the major cell-surface receptors in humans that are targeted by 34% of marketed small molecule drugs.聽

Tate said: 鈥� 探花直播election to EMBO Membership is a great honour and will enhance my interactions with the superb scientists throughout Europe. 探花直播strength of the scientific community in Europe is amazing and we all benefit enormously from being a member of this family.鈥�

Dr Marta Zlatic, research leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Marta鈥檚 lab combines connectomics with physiology and behavioural analysis, in the tractable Drosophila larval model system, to discover the fundamental principles by which brains generate behaviour.聽

Zlatic said: "I feel extremely honoured and grateful that our research is being recognized in this way."

EMBO Members can actively participate in EMBO鈥檚 initiatives by serving on the organisation's Council, committees and editorial boards, participating in the evaluation of applications for EMBO funding, acting as mentors to young scientists in the EMBO community, and advising on key activities. EMBO鈥檚 administrative headquarters are in Heidelberg, Germany.聽

Eight Cambridge researchers - six from the 探花直播 of Cambridge and two from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology - are among the 63 scientists from around the world elected this year as Members and Associate Members of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO).

探花直播text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright 漏探花直播 of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified.聽 All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways 鈥� as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Anatomy of a decision: mapping early development

cjb250 — Wed, 06 Jul 2016 17:00:34 +0000

探花直播point in our development when the whole body plan is set, just before individual organs start to develop, is known as gastrulation. Understanding this point in very early development is vital to understanding how humans and animals develop and how things go wrong. One of the biggest challenges in studying gastrulation is the very small number of cells that make up an embryo at this stage.

鈥淚f we want to better understand the natural world around us, one of the fundamental questions is, how do animals develop?鈥� says Professor Bertie Gottgens from the Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council Cambridge Stem Cell Institute at the 探花直播 of Cambridge. 鈥淗ow do you turn from an egg into an animal, with all sorts of tissues? Many of the things that go wrong, like birth defects, are caused by problems in early development. We need to have an atlas of normal development for comparison when things go wrong.鈥�

Today, thanks to advances in single-cell sequencing, the team was able to analyse over 1000 individual cells of gastrulating mouse embryos. 探花直播result is an atlas of gene expression during very early, healthy mammalian development.

鈥淪ingle-cell technologies are a major change over what we鈥檝e used before 鈥� we can now make direct observations to see what鈥檚 going on during the earliest stages of development,鈥� says Dr John Marioni, Research Group Leader at EMBL-EBI, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the 探花直播 of Cambridge. 鈥淲e can look at individual cells and see the whole set of genes that are active at stages of development, which until now have been very difficult to access.

鈥淥nce we have that, we can take cells from embryos in which some genetic factors are not working properly at a specific developmental stage, and map them to the healthy atlas to better understand what might be happening.鈥�

To illustrate the usefulness of the atlas, the team studied what happened when a genetic factor essential for the formation of blood cells was removed.

鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 what we expected at all. We found that cells which in healthy embryos would commit to becoming blood cells would actually become confused in the embryos lacking the key gene, effectively getting stuck,鈥� says Dr Marioni. 鈥淲hat is so exciting about this is that it demonstrates how we can now look at the very small number of cells that are actually making the decision at the precise time point when the decision is being made. It gives us a completely different perspective on development.鈥�

鈥淲hat is really exciting for me is that we can look at things that we know are important but were never able to see before 鈥� perhaps like people felt when they got hold of a microscope for the first time, suddenly seeing worlds they鈥檇 never thought of,鈥� says Professor Gottgens. 鈥淭his is just the beginning of how single cell genomics will transform our understanding of early development.鈥�

探花直播study was made possible by a Wellcome Trust Strategic Award to study Gastrulation and by the Sanger/EBI Single Cell Genomics Centre.

Reference
Scialdone A, et al. Resolving early mesoderm diversification through single-cell expression profiling. Nature; 6 July 2016; DOI: 10.1038/nature18633

Adapted from a press release from the European Bioinformatics Institute.

In the first genome-scale experiment of its kind, researchers have gained new insights into how a mouse embryo first begins to transform from a ball of unfocussed cells into a small, structured entity. Published in Nature, the single-cell genomics study was led by the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the 探花直播 of Cambridge.

We can look at individual cells and see the whole set of genes that are active at stages of development, which until now have been very difficult to access

John Marioni

Hector Lazo

abstract blood cells

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Computer model of blood development could speed up search for new leukaemia drugs

cjb250 — Mon, 09 Feb 2015 16:00:00 +0000

探花直播human body produces over 2.5 million new blood cells during every second of our adult lives, but how this process is controlled remains poorly understood. Around 30,000 new patients each year are diagnosed with cancers of the blood each year in the UK alone. These cancers, which include leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma, occur when the production of new blood cells gets out of balance, for example if the body produces an overabundance of white blood cells.

Biomedical scientists from the Wellcome Trust-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research collaborated for the past 2 years with computational biologists at Microsoft Research and Cambridge 探花直播鈥檚 Department of Biochemistry.聽 This interdisciplinary team of researchers have developed a computer model to help gain a better understanding of the control mechanisms that keep blood production normal. 探花直播details are published today in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

鈥淲ith this new computer model, we can carry out simulated experiments in seconds that would take many weeks to perform in the laboratory, dramatically speeding up research into blood development and the genetic mutations that cause leukaemia,鈥� says Professor Bertie Gottgens whose research team is based at the 探花直播鈥檚 Cambridge Institute for Medical Research.

Dr Jasmin Fisher from Microsoft Research and the Department of Biochemistry at the 探花直播 of Cambridge says: 鈥淭his is yet another endorsement of how computer programs empower us to gain better understanding of remarkably complicated processes. What is ground-breaking about the current work is that we show how we can automate the process of building such programs based on raw experimental data. It provides us with a blueprint to develop computer models relevant to other human diseases including common cancers such as breast and colon cancer.鈥�

To construct the computer model, PhD student Vicki Moignard from the Stem Cell Institute measured the activity of 48 genes in over 3,900 blood progenitor cells that give rise to all other types of blood cell: red and white blood cells, and platelets. These genes include TAL1 and RUNX1, both of which are essential for the development of blood stem cells, and hence to human life.

Computational biology PhD student Steven Woodhouse then used the resulting dataset to construct the computer model of blood cell development, using computational approaches originally developed at Microsoft Research for synthesis of computer code. Importantly, subsequent laboratory experiments validated the accuracy of this new computer model.

One way the computer model can be used is to simulate the activity of key genes implicated in blood cancers.聽 For example, around one in five of all children who develop leukaemia has a faulty version of the gene RUNX1, as does a similar proportion of adults with acute myeloid leukaemia, one of the most deadly forms of leukaemia in adults. 探花直播computer model shows how RUNX1 interacts with other genes to control blood cell development: the gene produces a protein also known as Runx1, which in healthy patients activates a particular network of key genes; in patients with leukaemia, an altered form of the protein is thought to suppress this same network. If the researchers change the 鈥榬ules鈥� in the network model, they can simulate the formation of abnormal leukaemia cells. By tweaking the leukaemia model until the behaviour of the network reverts back to normal, the researchers believe they can identify promising pathways to target with drugs.

Professor Gottgens adds: 鈥淏ecause the computer simulations are very fast, we can quickly screen through lots of possibilities to pick the most promising ones as pathways for drug development. 探花直播cost of developing a new drug is enormous, and much of this cost comes from new candidate drugs failing late in the drug development process. Our model could significantly reduce the risk of failure, with the potential to make drug discovery faster and cheaper.鈥�

探花直播research was supported by the Medical Research Council, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Microsoft Research and the Wellcome Trust.

Dr Matt Kaiser, Head of Research at UK blood cancer charity Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research, which has funded Professor Gottgens鈥� team for over a decade, said: 鈥淔or some leukaemias, the majority of patients still ultimately die from their disease. Even for blood cancers for which the long-term survival chances are fairly good, such as childhood leukaemia, the treatment can be really gruelling. By harnessing the power of cutting-edge computer technology, this research will dramatically speed up the search for more effective and kinder treatments that target these cancers at their roots.鈥�

Reference
Moignard, V et al. Decoding the regulatory network of early blood development from single-cell gene expression measurements. Nature Biotech; 9 Feb 2015.

探花直播first comprehensive computer model to simulate the development of blood cells could help in the development of new treatments for leukaemia and lymphoma, say researchers at the 探花直播 of Cambridge and Microsoft Research.

With this new computer model, we can carry out simulated experiments in seconds that would take many weeks to perform in the laboratory

Bertie Gottgens

E. M. Unit, Royal Free Hospital

SEM image of normal red blood cells, computer-coloured red

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