̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Róisín Owens

Professor Ruth Cameron receives Suffrage Science award on the scheme’s tenth anniversary

sc604 — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 14:28:19 +0000

Ten years ago, Professor Dame Amanda Fisher, Director of the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences (then Clinical Sciences Centre), and Vivienne Parry OBE, science writer and broadcaster, concocted an idea to celebrate the contributions that women scientists have made to their field, sometimes overlooked in favour of their male counterparts. With an endorsement from Dr Helen Pankhurst CBE, women’s rights activist and great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, they called the awards scheme Suffrage Science.

Their awards were hand-crafted items of jewellery created by art students from Central Saint Martins-UAL, who worked with scientists to design pieces inspired by research and by the Suffragette movement. But rather than produce a new set of pieces for the next awards, each holder chose who they would like to pass their award onto, thus generating an extensive ‘family tree’ of incredible scientists and communicators.

As the relay continued, new branches of the Suffrage Science scheme were developed – the Engineering and Physical Sciences strand was founded in 2013, and the ‘Maths and Computing’ strand followed in 2016. ̽��ֱ��Suffrage Science family is now 148 strong, with a further 12 joining on Monday 8 March 2021, the tenth anniversary of the scheme.

Each previous holder chose to whom they wanted to pass their ‘heirloom’ piece of jewellery.

Professor Serena Best from Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, who was honoured in 2020, chose to pass her award to her colleague Professor Ruth Cameron. She said: “Professor Ruth Cameron is a highly successful and respected scientist in the field of biomaterials whose organisational abilities and communication skills are outstanding. Most recently, she has become the first female appointee to lead the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge in the Office of Head of Department. Ruth’s work ethic will provide inspiration to the next generation of young female scientists - demonstrating that the key to success is collegial support and collaboration.”

Professor Róisín Owens from Cambridge’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, and Professor Melinda Duer from the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, were also named winners in 2020. Owens has chosen to pass her award to Professor Natalie Stingelin from Georgia Institute of Technology, and Duer has chosen to pass her award to Dr Mary Anti Chama from the ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana.

“Natalie is a tremendous advocate for diversity in science and engineering,” said Owens. “She was incredibly supportive of me when I started out, mentoring me and suggesting my name for conferences and editorial work. She has worked tirelessly to support women and is very active on social media. She has brought countless young researchers, especially women under her wing, helping them to develop their careers. She is also very proactive in getting the old guard to be inclusive and diverse – including calling out conference organisers for not including women in their speaker lists. In her role as editor at RSC she has been very involved in trying to improve diversity and equality in publishing also.”

“I have known Mary since she was a Cambridge-Africa Research Fellow in Cambridge,” said Duer. “She impressed me then with how she approached interdisciplinary science, and brought in whatever techniques she needed in her quest to find new pharmaceutical compounds in plants. She has continued to impress me as she has developed her science and brought in new collaborators. She has been a champion for women in science throughout her career and very supportive of students and younger colleagues alike. I hope she won't mind my saying that she also ensured that all her siblings had access to higher education - and now continues that with ensuring that her graduate students have what they need to be successful. I always enjoy any discussion with Mary - she has shown me how one can be kind, compassionate and still be ambitious in one's science.”

Suffrage Science pioneer Professor Fisher said: “We dreamed up the awards scheme to celebrate the contribution that women have made to science, which often gets overlooked. This is as important now as it was ten years ago. This year’s awardees join a community of over 148 women scientists. I’m thrilled that since 2011, the awards have travelled from the UK, across Europe to the USA, Hong Kong, Iran and to Ghana, illustrating the international nature of science and engineering, and the global effort to improve the representation of women in STEM.”

Professor Ruth Cameron from Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy is one of twelve winners of this year’s Suffrage Science awards. She and the other winners will be honoured at an online celebration today, the tenth anniversary of the scheme. This will be the fifth Suffrage Science awards for engineering and physical sciences.

Ruth’s work ethic will provide inspiration to the next generation of young female scientists

Serena Best

Ruth Cameron

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Yes

Cell ‘membrane on a chip’ could speed up screening of drug candidates for COVID-19

sc604 — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 07:57:17 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Cornell ̽��ֱ�� and Stanford ̽��ֱ��, say their device could mimic any cell type--bacterial, human or even the tough cells walls of plants. Their research recently pivoted to how COVID-19 attacks human cell membranes and, more importantly, how it can be blocked.

̽��ֱ��devices have been formed on chips while preserving the orientation and functionality of the cell membrane and have been successfully used to monitor the activity of ion channels, a class of protein in human cells which are the target of more than 60% of approved pharmaceuticals. ̽��ֱ��results are published in two recent papers in Langmuir and ACS Nano.

Cell membranes play a central role in biological signalling, controlling everything from pain relief to infection by a virus, acting as the gatekeeper between a cell and the outside world. ̽��ֱ��team set out to create a sensor that preserves all of the critical aspects of a cell membrane—structure, fluidity, and control over ion movement—without the time-consuming steps needed to keep a cell alive.

̽��ֱ��device uses an electronic chip to measure any changes in an overlying membrane extracted from a cell, enabling the scientists to safely and easily understand how the cell interacts with the outside world.

̽��ֱ��device integrates cell membranes with conducting polymer electrodes and transistors. To generate the on-chip membranes, the Cornell team first optimised a process to produce membranes from live cells and then, working with the Cambridge team, coaxed them onto polymeric electrodes in a way that preserved all of their functionality. ̽��ֱ��hydrated conducting polymers provide a more ‘natural’ environment for cell membranes and allows robust monitoring of membrane function.

̽��ֱ��Stanford team optimised the polymeric electrodes for monitoring changes in the membranes. ̽��ֱ��device no longer relies on live cells that are often technically challenging to keep alive and require significant attention, and measurements can last over an extended time period.

“Because the membranes are produced from human cells, it’s like having a biopsy of that cell’s surface - we have all the material that would be present including proteins and lipids, but none of the challenges of using live cells,” said Dr Susan Daniel, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Cornell and senior author of the ACS Langmuir paper.

“This type of screening is typically done by the pharmaceutical industry with live cells, but our device provides an easier alternative,” said Dr Róisín Owens from Cambridge’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, and senior author of the ACS Nano paper. “This method is compatible with high-throughput screening and would reduce the number of false positives making it through into the R&D pipeline.”

“ ̽��ֱ��device can be as small as the size of a human cell and easily fabricated in arrays, which allows us to perform multiple measurements at the same time,” said Dr Anna-Maria Pappa, also from Cambridge and joint first author on both papers.

To date, the aim of the research, supported by funding from the United States Defense Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has been to demonstrate how viruses such as influenza interact with cells. Now, DARPA has provided additional funding to test the device’s effectiveness in screening for potential drug candidates for COVID-19 in a safe and effective way.

Given the significant risks involved to researchers working on SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, scientists on the project will focus on making virus membranes and fusing those with the chips. ̽��ֱ��virus membranes are identical to the SARS-CoV-2 membrane but don’t contain the viral nucleic acid. This way new drugs or antibodies to neutralise the virus spikes that are used to gain entry into the host cell can be identified. This work is expected to get underway on 1 August.

“With this device, we are not exposed to risky working environments for combating SARS-CoV-2. ̽��ֱ��device will speed up the screening of drug candidates and provide answers to questions about how this virus works,” said Dr Han-Yuan Liu, Cornell researcher and joint first author on both papers.

Future work will focus on scaling up production of the devices at Stanford and automating the integration of the membranes with the chips, leveraging the fluidics expertise from Stanford PI Juan Santiago who will join the team in August.

“This project has merged ideas and concepts from laboratories in the UK, California and New York, and shown a device that works reproducibly in all three sites. It is a great example of the power of integrating biology and materials science in addressing global problems,” said Stanford lead PI Professor Alberto Salleo.

References:
H-Y Liu et al. “Self-assembly of mammalian cell membranes on bioelectronic devices with functional transmembrane proteins.” ACS Langmuir (2020). DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.0c00804

A-M. Pappa et al. “Optical and Electronic Ion Channel Monitoring from Native Human Membranes.” ACS Nano (2020). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.0c01330

Researchers have developed a human cell ‘membrane on a chip’ that allows continuous monitoring of how drugs and infectious agents interact with our cells, and may soon be used to test potential drug candidates for COVID-19.

This type of screening is typically done by the pharmaceutical industry with live cells, but our device provides an easier alternative

Róisín Owens

Susan Daniel/Cornell ̽��ֱ��

Schematic of membrane on a chip device

Yes

3D ‘organ on a chip’ could accelerate search for new disease treatments

sc604 — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 18:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��device, which incorporates cells inside a 3D transistor made from a soft sponge-like material inspired by native tissue structure, gives scientists the ability to study cells and tissues in new ways. By enabling cells to grow in three dimensions, the device more accurately mimics the way that cells grow in the body.

̽��ֱ��researchers, led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, say their device could be modified to generate multiple types of organs - a liver on a chip or a heart on a chip, for example – ultimately leading to a body on a chip which would simulate how various treatments affect the body as whole. Their results are reported in the journal Science Advances.

Traditionally, biological studies were (and still are) done in petri dishes, where specific types of cells are grown on a flat surface. While many of the medical advances made since the 1950s, including the polio vaccine, have originated in petri dishes, these two-dimensional environments do not accurately represent the native three-dimensional environments of human cells, and can, in fact, lead to misleading information and failures of drugs in clinical trials.

“Two-dimensional cell models have served the scientific community well, but we now need to move to three-dimensional cell models in order to develop the next generation of therapies,” said Dr Róisín Owens from Cambridge’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, and the study’s senior author.

“Three-dimensional cell cultures can help us identify new treatments and know which ones to avoid if we can accurately monitor them,” said Dr Charalampos Pitsalidis, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology, and the study’s first author.

Now, 3D cell and tissue cultures are an emerging field of biomedical research, enabling scientists to study the physiology of human organs and tissues in ways that have not been possible before. However, while these 3D cultures can be generated, technology that accurately assesses their functionality in real time has not been well-developed.

“ ̽��ֱ��majority of the cells in our body communicate with each other by electrical signals, so in order to monitor cell cultures in the lab, we need to attach electrodes to them,” said Dr Owens. “However, electrodes are pretty clunky and difficult to attach to cell cultures, so we decided to turn the whole thing on its head and put the cells inside the electrode.”

̽��ֱ��device which Dr Owens and her colleagues developed is based on a ‘scaffold’ of a conducting polymer sponge, configured into an electrochemical transistor. ̽��ֱ��cells are grown within the scaffold and the entire device is then placed inside a plastic tube through which the necessary nutrients for the cells can flow. ̽��ֱ��use of the soft, sponge electrode instead of a traditional rigid metal electrode provides a more natural environment for cells and is key to the success of organ on chip technology in predicting the response of an organ to different stimuli.

Other organ on a chip devices need to be completely taken apart in order to monitor the function of the cells, but since the Cambridge-led design allows for real-time continuous monitoring, it is possible to carry out longer-term experiments on the effects of various diseases and potential treatments.

“With this system, we can monitor the growth of the tissue, and its health in response to external drugs or toxins,” said Pitsalidis. “Apart from toxicology testing, we can also induce a particular disease in the tissue, and study the key mechanisms involved in that disease or discover the right treatments.”

̽��ֱ��researchers plan to use their device to develop a ‘gut on a chip’ and attach it to a ‘brain on a chip’ in order to study the relationship between the gut microbiome and brain function as part of the IMBIBE project, funded by the European Research Council.

̽��ֱ��researchers have filed a patent for the device in France.

Reference:
C. Pitsalidis et al. ‘Transistor in a tube: a route to three-dimensional bioelectronics.’ Science Advances (2018). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aat4253

Researcher profile: Dr Charalampos Pitsalidis

Dr Charalampos Pitsalidis is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology, where he develops prototypes of miniaturised platforms that can be integrated with advanced cell cultures for drug screening. A physicist with materials science background, he collaborates with biologists and chemists, in the UK and around the world, in order to develop and test drug screening platforms to help reduce the number of animals used in research.

“Animal studies remain the major means of drug screening in the later stages of drug development however they are increasingly questioned due to ethics, cost and relevance concerns. ̽��ֱ��reduction of animals in research is what motivates my work.

“I hope that one day I will have managed to make a small contribution in accelerating the drug discovery pipeline and towards the replacement reduction and refinement of animal research,” he said. “I believe that in 2018, we have everything in our hands, huge technological advancements, and all we need is to develop better and more predictive tools for assessing various therapies. It is not impossible; it just requires a systematic and highly collaborative approach across multiple disciplines.”

He calls Cambridge a truly inspiring place to work. “ ̽��ֱ��state-of-the-art facilities and world-class infrastructure with cutting-edge equipment allow us to conduct high-quality research,” he said. “On top of that, the highly collaborative environment among the various groups and the various departments support multidisciplinary research endeavours and well-balanced research. ̽��ֱ��strong university and entrepreneurial ecosystem in both high tech and biological science makes Cambridge an ideal place for innovative research in my field.”

Researchers have developed a three-dimensional ‘organ on a chip’ which enables real-time continuous monitoring of cells, and could be used to develop new treatments for disease while reducing the number of animals used in research.

Two-dimensional cell models have served the scientific community well, but we now need to move to three-dimensional cell models in order to develop the next generation of therapies

Róisín Owens

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

Tubistor device

Yes