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Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh Queen Street
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Neuroscience Day 2014 Supporters Edinburgh Neuroscience would like to thank all the centres and org anisations that have contributed to Neuroscience Day 201 4: University of Edinburgh: Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic, Biomedical Teaching Organisation, Brain Research Imaging Centre, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, Centre for Cognitive & Neural Systems, Centre for Cognitive Ageing & Cognitive Epidemiology, Centre for Integrative Physiology, Centre for Neuroregeneration, Centre for Regenerative Medicine, Institute for Academic Development, Neuroinformatics Doctoral Training Centre, Patrick Wild Centre for Research into Autism, Fragile X Syndrome & Intellectual Disabilities, Psychology, The Roslin Institute
Organisations and Companies: Takeda Cambridge UK (poster competition prizes), The Scottish Mental Health Research Network, Campden Instruments
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Neuroscience Day 2014 Programme of Talks
08.30
Arrival and Registration
Session 1 Chaired by: Professor Charles ffrench-Constant, Director, Edinburgh Neuroscience and MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine 09.00
Welcome Prof Charles ffrench-Constant, Director, Edinburgh Neuroscience and MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine
09.15
Mechanisms of myelination and synapse formation Prof Dies Meijer, Centre for Neuroregeneration
09.40
Hearing and proprioception: sensory systems in Drosophila and b eyond Prof Andy Jarman, Centre for Integrative Physiology
10.05
Functional implications from structure-based analysis of post-translational modification and disease-associated sequence variation Dr Dinesh Soares, MRC Human Genetics Unit and Centre for Genomic & Experimental Medicine
10.30
Coffee & Posters
Session 2 Chaired by: Professor Andrew MacIntosh, Psychiatry, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences 11.10
Increasing value and reducing waste in laboratory research – don't get left behind Prof Malcolm MacLeod, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences
11.35
Chancellor’s Fellows Session 1 Emotion is Risky; Handle with Care Dr Stella Chan, Clinical Psychology Investigating the potential benefits of oxytocin for individuals with autism Dr Bonnie Auyeung, Psychology Targeting translation for the treatment of fragile X and autism Dr Emily Osterweil, Centre for Integrative Physiology DNA methylation: a new predictor of death? Dr Riccardo Marioni, Centre for Cognitive Ageing & Cognitive Epidemiology "Breathless worms run a marathon" - and what they tell us about neural mechanisms sustaining homeostasis Dr Emanuel Busch, Centre for Integrative Physiology
12.35
Lunch & Posters
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Session 3 Chaired by: Professor Megan Holmes, Centre for Cardiovascular Science 14.00
Chancellor’s Fellows Session 2 Signal processing: A window into brain function Dr Javier Escudero, Engineering Transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of neural stem cell self-renewal Dr Steven Pollard, MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine Towards a neurobiology of forgetting Dr Oliver Hardt, Centre for Cognitive & Neural Systems
14.40
Zapping the brain to mess with the mind: What TMS and SCR can teach us about consciousness Dr David Carmel, Psychology
15.05
The intersection of amyloid beta and tau at synapses in Alzheimer's disease Dr Tara Spires-Jones, Centre for Cognitive & Neural Systems
15.30
Tea and Posters
Session 4 Chaired by: Professor Cathie Sudlow, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences 16.00
Announcement of the Takeda Poster Competition winners Presentation by Dr Peter Maycox, Associate Director, Discovery Biology, Takeda Cambridge Ltd
16.05
Annual Distinguished Lecture in Neuroscience 2013 What patients and their genetic variation can teach us about haemorrhagic stroke Prof Jonathan Rosand, Professor of Neurology, Department of Neurology, Harvard Medical School and J.P. Kistler Chair in Neurology, Director, Neurocritical Care Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital Introduced by Dr Cathie Sudlow, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences
17.05
Close of Meeting
19.30
Meeting Dinner Merchants Restaurant, Merchant’s Street (off Candlemaker Row) Hosted by Neuroscience Honours Class
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Edinburgh Neuroscience Activities 2014 Edinburgh Neuroscience spent much of 2013 preparing and submitting the Research Excellence Framework (REF) submission for our ‘Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience’ research. This is essentially a UK-wide government audit of our research output, impact and researcher support since 2008. Our submission will be assessed, alongside the other UK Universities in this panel, throughout 2014 and in early 2015 we will find out how we have done. Most Edinburgh Neuroscience research staff will have been submitted either to the ‘Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience’ panel or to one of the other themed panels (depending on where their research is primarily based). Conveying the interdisciplinary and collegiate nature of research activity in Edinburgh was a major challenge and, after a lot of debate and consideration, a thematic structure was agreed (see figure) which we hope you feel covers much of the activity undertaken in Edinburgh.
Supporting Researchers In addition to our annual Neuroscience Day, we once again ran the very successful ‘Autumn School for PhD Students’ in October 2013. This training school was instigated in 2012 and is run in collaboration with the Centre for Cognitive Ageing & Cognitive Epidemiology. It brings together students from across the full neuroscience spectrum at Edinburgh, encouraging collaboration and interaction from the earliest stages of a research career. We also continue to promote excellence in research in the next generation by supporting the university Neurology Society in running the ‘2nd National Neuroscience to Neurology Undergraduate Conference’. This conference was started in 2012 with seedcorn funding from the Neuroresearchers Fund and was, once again, fully booked with 100 students from across the UK. Furthermore, our Neuroresearcher’s Fund continues to support our early years researchers (£20,300 awarded since 2010) and in 2013 three researchers were funded to undertake a range of activities. • Veronica Brivio (PhD student, Centre for Neuroregeneration) was awarded £950 to start a new collaboration with Prof. Thomas Misgeld at the Technical University, Munich, on live imaging of protein targeting and delivery. • Elisa Parish (PhD student, Centre for Integrative Physiology) was awarded £1,000 to visit the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Tokyo, to learn the electroporation of the embryonic thalamus technique. • Anna Jones (PhD student, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences) was awarded £500 to support setting up an interdisciplinary Aphasia research group. The next call will open on 13th March (deadline 30th April). It is open to all Edinburgh Neuroscience early years researchers and is designed to benefit both the applicant and the wider research community.
Global Connections Edinburgh Neuroscience continues to foster international partnerships. Our student and researcher exchanges with the Brain Centre Rudolf Magnus, Utrecht, continue and we are now exploring sharing training courses (our ‘Autumn School for PhD Students’ is modelled on their PhD training school). In the past year we have been working hard setting up a joint PhD programme with Aarhus University in Denmark and we will have 3 PhD students starting in Autumn 2014 – with Malcolm Macleod (Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences), Prof Megan Holmes (Centre for Cardiovascular Sciences) and Prof Andrew McIntosh (Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, Psychiatry). This forms part of a University-wide joint PhD project and we are spearheading the programme for CMVM. Finally, the collaboration with InStem and the National Centre for Biological Sciences is progressing well and Edinburgh Neuroscience researchers are in the process of setting up the new ‘Centre for Brain Development and Repair’ in Bangalore, India which will focus on strong translational studies in the field of neurological and psychiatric brain disorders.
Reaching Out The Public Engagement programme ran in a reduced format in 2013 (due to REF commitments) but still delivered activities to 305 school pupils and 500 adults, including our annual public Christmas Lecture. We also supported The Wellcome Trust-funded Mindyerbrain team (Lisa Genzel, Marie Belcher and Thomas Pratt) who have created an entertaining ‘brain facts’ Facebook page, Twitter Feed and accompanying cinema advert (www.facebook.com/Mindyerbrain, @mindyerbrain). Edinburgh Neuroscience members participated, for the first time, in the new Dunbar and Midlothian Science Festivals as well 5
as the British Neuroscience Association Festival of Neuroscience in London, where our activities were led by The Roslin Institute (and reached about 5,000 people). The Art-Neuroscience Collaboration with the Edinburgh College of Art continues and we have just jointly run a workshop for undergraduates as part of Innovative Learning Week 2014. We have also contributed to Scotland-wide education as Edinburgh Neuroscience members helped Education Scotland create support materials on the nervous system for the revised Human Biology Higher curriculum and these were made publically available in 2013 (www.educationscotland.gov.uk/highersciences/humanbiology/unitthree). Finally, this is now an award-winning public engagement programme as Dr Jane Haley (Scientific Coordinator) was given the British Neuroscience Association Award for the Public Engagement of Neuroscience in December 2013.
Moving Forward Over the next few years Edinburgh Neuroscience will be involved in the on-going process of moving research from the George Square campus to Little France, helping in the effort to provide suitable facilities for the Centre for Integrative Physiology and also new imaging facilities at Little France to allow the Brain Research Imaging Centre to move from Western General Hospital to join Clinical Brain Sciences at Little France. All of these enterprises require major fundraising. In addition to providing support for our international PhD initiatives, Edinburgh Neuroscience will also assist in expanding and coordinating the PhD opportunities in Edinburgh, by providing a uniform ‘shop window’ for all our neuroscience-related PhD opportunities.
Round-up of Centre Activities Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences It has been a great year for CCBS, as you can tell by the length of this entry! We are also pleased to report that the Centre held its first Away Day in September, which included art and motivational talks in addition to a scientific round-up, and even a variant of speed-dating to help the many and diverse members to get to know each other.
Clinical Neurosciences Stroke: The stroke group has published numerous studies and clinical trials that are influencing clinical guidelines and NHS practice, for example CLOTS 3 on the use of intermittent pneumatic compression to reduce DVT in stroke (Dennis, Lancet); ARUBA on early treatment of asymptomatic brain arteriovenous malformations (Salman, Lancet); IST3 on thrombolysis for stroke (Sandercock, Lancet Neurol); and guidance on the characteristics of small vessel stroke (Wardlaw, Lancet Neurol). Other stroke trials underway include FOCUS (Mead, Dennis), RESTART (Salman) and EuroHype (Macleod, Wardlaw). The CAMARADES project (Macleod, Salman) has influenced policy at Nature, Science and the NIH. Through key contributions to UK Biobank (Sudlow, Chief Scientist), we have attracted substantial funding for Consortium-based epidemiological studies. Personal Chairs were awarded to Drs Salman and Sudlow, and Dr Whiteley has established the Stroke Winter School, aiming to attract Stroke Associationfunded Princess Margaret Research Development Fellows.
National Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Research & Surveillance Unit (NCJDRSU): Whilst no new cases of variant CJD have been identified in the UK during the past year, the Unit was involved in a study confirming that one in 2,000 people in the UK has evidence of variant CJD infection (Gill et al, BMJ) and provided evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology select committee on the matter. Risk factors for CJD development therefore remain of great importance and the Unit has identified lysosomal degradation as an efficient route of prion degradation in cells from human tonsils (Krejciova et al, Am J Pathol) and has identified a novel genetic risk factor for development of the disease (Bishop et al, BMC Med Genet). The Unit has also published a study implicating chronic wasting disease in elk as a potentially zoonotic prion disease (Barria et al, Emerg Infect Dis). The Department of Health and the Scottish Government continue to fund the Unit’s surveillance activities and have just awarded additional funds for basic studies of genetic risk factors, CSF test development, prion biochemistry and cell biology. 6
The
Euan
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Neurone
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Research
Centre has
expanded its PI base to encompass approximately 30 researchers Scotland-wide. Numerous publications include Dev Cell (Becker), Cell (Lyons), PNAS and Neuron (Chandran). Simon Parson (Aberdeen) and Catherina Becker (CNR) obtained Personal Chairs, and David Lyons (CNR) was awarded a Lister Fellowship and WT Fellowship. Local support and worldwide partnerships are a key feature of the Centre, as illustrated by a visit from South African rugby legend Joost van der Westhuizen, who has MND, and the comedian Kevin Bridges raising £10K for the Centre on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”.
Regenerative Neurology: Siddharthan Chandran gave a talk at TEDGlobal, “Regenerating Hope”, David Hunt was awarded a WT Intermediate Clinical Fellowship and Don Mahad a Scottish Senior Clinical Fellowship. A major $3M collaboration on neurodegenerative diseases led by Siddharthan Chandran and Giles Hardingham (CIP) with the US-based Pharma company Biogen began in Autumn 2013.
The Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic was officially opened in October by HRH The Princess Royal, with founder J.K. Rowling also in attendance. The Clinic now hosts 60 specialist clinics a month, and has seen almost 2500 patients during its first year of operation. The first three Rowling Scholars have started their PhDs: Shyamanga Borooah (CRM), Peter Foley and James Cameron. The spectrum of research clinics has expanded beyond multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease, and now includes movement disorders, cognitive disorders, Huntington’s disease, autism and brain haemorrhage after stroke. A new £3M MRC-EME-funded clinical trial in secondary progressive MS (MS-SMART) will begin in the Spring.
Synaptic
Biology and Disease: Research highlights from the group underscore the importance of bioinformatics and proteomics on synapse complexes and the importance of the basic science to our increasing disease work (Hill et al, Transl Psychiatry; Fromer et al, Nature; Purcell et al, Nature). The Human Brain Project successfully launched in October 2013 and the critical ramp-up phase will run for 30 months. Professor Grant, as director of the Molecular Division, hosted the first HBP Edinburgh meeting in February 2014. Professor Grant is a coinvestigator leading the new next-generation multi-photon intravital microscopy facility funded by the CMVM and the MRC at a total cost of £1.7M. Finally, Seth Grant was appointed Honorary Professor at The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, University of Melbourne. Muir Maxwell Epilepsy Centre: The Muir Maxwell Epilepsy Centre, in collaboration with the Euan MacDonald Centre and Patrick Wild Centre, has established a wireless telemetry system for experimental epilepsy research in freely moving rodents. Diffusion Tensor Imaging software at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children will facilitate quantitative MR Imaging in children for research and surgery. There were two notable grant successes, for Jothy Kandasamy (NHS Research Scotland Career Fellowship) and Kari Aaberg (Norwegian Research Council Fellowship). The Chin group published findings from their population-based studies on childhood status epilepticus (Martinos et al, Epilepsia; Yoong et al, Epilepsia).
Neuropathology: The Edinburgh Brain Bank (PI, Colin Smith) has recently moved from the central area to the Chancellor’s Building at Little France and has been funded for 5 years by the MRC (£1.7M). It focuses on tissue from ‘controls’ and those with neurological disorders such as motor neurone disease, dementia (including prionopathies), intracerebral haemorrhage and traumatic brain injury. Key publications include Kay et al, Nat Protoc; Cruchaga et al, Nature; Ryten et al, Nat Commun; Samarasekera et al, Lancet Neurology. We collaborate widely across Edinburgh Neuroscience (e.g., Pettit et al, Brain; Wardlaw et al, Lancet Neurology) and beyond, and provide input into public and professional meetings on human post mortem tissue donation and accessing human brain tissue for research. James Ironside recently stepped down from his role as the first Director of the MRC UK Brain Bank Network, and has developed key documents to support the standardisation of quality assessment throughout UK brain banking.
Neuro-Oncology: Edinburgh Neuro-Oncology strengthened its scientific credentials with the addition of Dr Steve Pollard in Oct 2013, with the long term goal of uncovering the molecular and cellular mechanisms that control stem cell lineage choice in the context of the lethal human brain cancer, glioblastoma. The clinical team continues to increase their involvement in clinical trials through ECNO (new website at www.ecno.co.uk). 7
Neuroimaging Sciences (NiS) Research highlights this year include STandards for ReportIng Vascular changes on nEuroimaging (STRIVE) (Joanna Wardlaw, with Dichgans [Munich] and Smith [Calgary]). The findings of this initiative—which established neuroimaging standards for research into cerebral small vessel disease and its effects on ageing, neurodegeneration and stroke—were published in Lancet Neurol and publicly endorsed by the USA Alzheimer’s Association.
Whole brain white matter map showing major tracts and hippocampal structures (light blue) obtained using diffusion and structural MRI from a 92 year old participant of the Lothian Birth Cohort!1921. Image courtesy of Dr. Mark Bastin.
The Brain Research Imaging Centre (BRIC) published two papers in Neurobiology of Aging on brain imaging findings in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936, both of which show the importance of considering early life cognitive ability when researching changes in cognition with ageing. Other key publications include studies on brain temperature measurement (Thrippleton, Marshall et al), brain mineral deposition (Hernandez et al) and white matter disease in stroke and ageing (Bastin et al, Hernandez et al, Aribisala et al, Wiseman et al). Overall, the imaging performed in BRIC has contributed to between ‘6 and 10% of some world-wide genetic analyses’.
The UoE/Heriot Watt Centre for In Vivo Imaging Sciences (CIVIS) held its annual scientific meeting in November on ‘Imaging in Tissue Regeneration’. This successful event focused on the use of 3D printing in biology. Dates for your diary include a UoE Basics in Medical Image Analysis with MatLab (October 2014) and HW’s ESRIC Super-Resolution Summer School (August 2014). With two CIVIS-funded PhD students now enrolled, we very much look forward to CIVIS ensuring that people are more aware of the imaging resources and training available in Edinburgh (see www.edinburghimaging.ed.ac.uk). Andrew Farrell and the e-learning team launched the CIVIS online MSc Imaging in September, which runs alongside the existing BRIC online MSc Neuroimaging for Research. In 2014 we will also offer convenient online short courses (CPD) and postgraduate professional development courses (PPD) and can also offer bespoke online short courses for commercial partners. Information can be found at www.imagingmsc.ed.ac.uk. NiS will be moving to new offices in Chancellors Building at Little France in June.
Psychiatry Stephen Lawrie and Andrew McIntosh are part of two ! 5M EU consortia to develop neuroimaging applications to improve the management of psychosis, and are also part of the £5M MRC STRATA consortium to identify sub-groups with particular antipsychotic drug response profiles. Stephen Lawrie and Mattias Schwanneur (Clinical Psychology), with colleagues in Glasgow, are PIs on a £1M MRC grant to use MEG and MRS to diagnose schizophrenia as early as possible. The Patrick Wild Centre goes from strength to strength with Andy Stanfield having completed three clinical treatment trials for fragile X syndrome this year. Mandy Johnstone has started her Wellcome Trust MB PhD Graduate Fellowship on induced pluripotent stem cells in psychiatric disorders, and Heather Whalley has been awarded a College fellowship. Sheila Howitt and Tom Russ (AlzScotDRC & CCACE) became Lecturers. Several members contributed to a Nature Genetics paper that reported several new genetic variants associated with schizophrenia. There are now four psychiatrists doing their PhDs with EN PIs (Kyla Brown, Katy Marwick, Lindsay Mizen, Ally Rooney) and two more will start in 2014 (Leanne Duthie and Grant Robertson). Three medical students at Edinburgh have been designated ‘Pathfinder Fellows’ by the Royal College of Psychiatrists more than any other University in the UK – and one of them, Liana Romaniuk, was jointly awarded the Sir William Darling 2013 memorial prize as an outstanding student in the University. Staff in the Scottish Mental Health Research Network, who co-sponsor this event, have been lauded as the top recruiting UK site for the Roche-sponsored Impact of Illness study, and have been the equal top recruiting site in another study. Early in 2013, those same staff managed 740 ascents/descents or 130,240 steps of the Kennedy Tower in a 24-hour period (the equivalent of climbing 19,881m from the bottom of the Mariana Trench to the top of Mount Everest), raising £1347 for the Mental Health Foundation. A particularly big shout out and all round slap on the back goes to Andrew McKechanie, who managed 111 ascents/descents of the Kennedy Tower himself. An incredible effort
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Centre for Cognitive Ageing & Cognitive Epidemiology The Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology’s (CCACE) (www.ccace.ed.ac.uk) aim is to understand the reciprocal influences of cognition and health across the human life course and between generations. CCACE is an international leader in the crucial field of Cognitive Ageing and the growing field of Cognitive Epidemiology. In September 2013 CCACE began its second 5-year phase of funding from the Medical Research Council Lifelong Health and Wellbeing (LLHW) initiative, which represents a £9.2m investment by LLHW and the University of Edinburgh. CCACE now has over 70 members, 9 currently funded PhD students (with a further 7 having now completed either their PhD or an MSc) and 10 core staff. Centre members have published over 900 papers since CCACE began in September 2008. Recent publication highlights for 2012 and 2013 include 8 papers in the Nature journal Molecular Psychiatry. These papers have examined a range of topics on the genetics of cognitive ageing, and brain markers, such as cortical thickness and white matter integrity, with cognitive function. These publications are taking CCACE to the international forefront of research on the brain and genetics of cognitive ageing. Through Co-Investigators Professors Ian Deary and John Starr, CCACE is also contributing to a new £1.3million LLHW project, with members of Architecture at the Edinburgh College of Art, entitled ‘OPENspace: Mobility, Mood and Place’ (www.openspace.eca.ac.uk/researchprojects-Mobility-Mood-Place.php). The project explores how places can be designed collaboratively to make mobility easy, enjoyable and meaningful for older people. The 3 year project will make use of data from the Lothian Birth Cohorts. It will be the first to consider the influence of local environments in which people have resided from childhood and how they influence our mood and, in turn, our willingness to be active within them. Early this year CCACE also became part of the MRC UK Dementia Platform which is led by Professor John Gallacher of Cardiff University. CCACE Director Professor Ian Deary is a member of the Dementia Platform Executive Committee, with CCACE Co-Director Professor John Starr, and CCACE members Cathy Sudlow and Jean Manson joining Ian as Co-Investigators on the project. The aim of the £5million 5 year project is to develop knowledge into new interventions and therapies that could prevent or delay the onset and progression of dementia. As a Medical Research Council (MRC) LLHW funded Centre, CCACE was invited to join in the 2013 celebrations to mark the centenary of the MRC. In June 2013 CCACE joined other Scottish MRC Centres in a week of celebratory events to mark one hundred years of life-changing medical discoveries. CCACE hosted a sell-out Brain Maze, held in the Department of Psychology, and a Centenary Debate entitled “Does the wisdom of age trump the speed of youth?” which was chaired by Sally Magnusson (right) (to watch the full debate visit http://youtu.be/_5naEFwmqYs). You can find out more about CCACE, our achievements and our upcoming events by visiting www.ccace.ed.ac.uk or following CCACE on Twitter (@ccace), Facebook (ccaceEdinburgh) or YouTube (ccaceVideo).
Centre for Cognitive & Neural Systems The Centre for Cognitive and Neural Systems (CCNS) is a systems-oriented group of researchers with interests in cognitive aspects of memory, pathologies of memory and neuropharmacology. We have recently completely re-vamped our web site (www.ccns.ed.ac.uk) where we describe our approach as follows: “Guided by specific hypotheses about the organisation of memory systems and putative mechanisms of cognitive disorder, we use behavioural, pharmacological, physiological and microscopy techniques – in both humans and animals - to address questions about normal cognition and how it breaks down in neurological and psychiatric disease, particularly Alzheimer’s Disease.” Like other Centres, we have been successful in securing new Chancellor’s Fellows and were delighted to welcome Tara Spires-Jones (from Harvard) and Oliver Hardt (from McGill) during 2013. They, and Iris Oren who had arrived a little earlier, have been successful in securing grant funding and so their labs are up-and-running in an exciting way providing a new impetus to us all. Paul Dudchenko secured funding from BBSRC and Richard Morris is continuing his research with an ERC Advanced Investigator Award. We are privileged to have a number of Associate Members (see our web site) with whom we have active collaborations. One major event to which CCNS contributed was a Discussion Meeting at the Royal Society that celebrated the 40th anniversary of the first paper on long-term potentiation (LTP), now published in a special issue of Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. B. (2014), the oldest scientific journal in the world. Quite striking at 9
that meeting was the seamless mixture of exciting new biology and researchers seeking to apply our understanding of activity-dependent synaptic plasticity in a more translational way, such as to issues concerning pain, epilepsy and neurodegenerative disease. The interdependence of these basic and applied work is fundamental. Marc Tessier-Levigne put it well in a short speech this year: “Truly transformative knowledge comes from curiousity-driven research.” This talk, just 8 minutes long, is well worth watching: www.amacad.org/binaries/video/streamPlayer.aspx?i=429
Centre for Integrative Physiology The Centre for Integrative Physiology welcomed several new Chancellors fellows in 2013 including: Emanuel Busch, Emily Osterweil, Sebastien Griess, Alastair Garfield, Nathalie Rochefort and Christos Gkokgas. Gareth Leng and John Menzies were awarded a large (8.7M euro) multicentre, multidisciplinary grant “Nudge-It” to study the determinants of food choice and, as part of the outreach work with this grant, they are now working with the Edinburgh International Science Festival to create a public event for April 2015 looking at issues related to Nudge-It. Tom Gillingwater has been awarded 2.5M as part of the European consortium Axonomix to identify translational networks altered in motor neurone diseases. Nathalie Rochefort was awarded a Wellcome Trust /Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellowship and a Marie Curie Career Integration grant to understand how sensory experience modifies the activity of cortical neural networks. Marie Curie Fellowships were awarded to Dr Janelle Pakan to work in Nathalie Rochefort’s lab and Dr Idoia Qintana to work with Prof David Price. Dr Rafael Pineda has been awarded a Newton International Fellowship to work in Mike Ludwig’s lab to interrogate the role and regulation of kisspeptin neurons in reproduction and behaviour. Amongst the publications in 2013, David Price’s lab revealed how Pax6 controls cortical progenitor proliferation through hypophosphorylation of Rb (Neuron 78:269-284); Matt Nolan’s lab determined how feedback inhibition controls gamma oscillations and grid cell firing (Neuron 77:141-154); Mike Ludwig revealed how dendritic peptide release controls crosstalk between neurosecretory and pre-autonomic neural networks (Neuron 78:1036-1049) and Andrew Jarman’s lab revealed how mutations in ZMYND10 causes primary ciliary dyskinesia (Am J Hum Generics 93:346-356)
Centre for Genomics & Experimental Medicine The Molecular Medicine Centre has now become the Centre for Genomics & Experimental Medicine and forms one of the three core centres that make up the Institute for Genetics & Molecular Medicine (the other two being the MRC Human Genetics Unit and the Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre). During 2013 the CGEM has recruited Chancellors Fellow Dr Kristin Nicodemus to develop machine learning and novel statistical approaches towards stratification of psychiatric disease and epistasis. Kristin trained at Johns Hopkins and is currently at Trinity College Dublin, she joins CGEM on 1st June, 2014. Large grants awarded in the past year include $1.96 million NIH R01 awarded jointly with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories: for ‘Testing the DISC1 pathway for functional genetic variation and epistasis in major depression.’ and £1.5 million investment by MRC HGU on SNP GWAS, exome chip analysis of 14,000 Generation Scotland participants with particular emphasis on major depressive disorder, cognition and pain. Recent research highlights include: 1) the ‘next generation sequencing’ study of the DISC1 gene which has highlighted the abundance and importance of rare coding and non-coding (regulatory) variants in recurrent major depression and cognition (Thomson et al, Molecular Psychiatry, ‘708 Common and 2010 rare DISC1 locus variants identified in 1542 subjects: analysis for association with psychiatric disorder and cognitive traits’). 2) Rare DISC1 coding variant associated with risk of schizophrenia and recurrent major depression provides novel insight into mitochondrial trafficking (Ogawa et al, Hum Molec Genet, DISC1 complexes with TRAK1 and Miro1 to modulate anterograde axonal mitochondrial trafficking.’ 3) Juvenile stress in a rodent model induces changes in the expression of three genes that have been implicated in psychiatric disorders, and an increase in anxiety-like behaviour, in adulthood. This study shows that childhood experience can lead to long-term changes in the expression of genes involved in susceptibility to psychiatric illness (Brydges et al., Mol Psychiatry. Juvenile stress produces long-lasting changes in hippocampal DISC1, GSK3ß and NRG1 expression).
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Centre for Neuroregeneration The Centre for Neuroregeneration was delighted to welcome HongYan Zhang as a new Chancellor's Fellow from St Andrews University. HongYan's interests are in how patterns are generated in the spinal cord of Xenopus. However, she is keen to take advantage of the extensive expertise in the zebrafish community in Edinburgh in order to apply genetics to these questions. David Lyons won a highly competitive Wellcome Trust Senior Fellowship and £1.9M will undoubtedly buy a lot of zebrafish. Congratulations also to members of the Centre for publications in Cell, Developmental Cell and Neuron. Dies Meijer recently joined us from the Erasmus University, Rotterdam. Although Dies is a member of CCBS he will be located in CNR and his interests in myelination and glial cell biology will help to consolidate Edinburgh's preeminence in this area, certainly in Europe if not globally.
Informatics The School of Informatics has been awarded three new Centres for Doctoral Training in areas related to the Neuroinformatics DTC, in Data Science, Robotics (joint with Heriot-Watt), and Pervasive Parallelism. In 2014 we are recruiting a limited number of students in our core area of computational neuroscience through our affiliated EuroSPIN PhD programme, and are seeking separate funding for future MSc+PhD intakes in computational neuroscience. In January 2014 we held our first Alumni Day, with reports and advice from a wide range of alumni. From our first 50 alumni, seven are now permanent faculty/academic-staff members in the UK, Canada, Japan, and China. Over the past year, BBC News has reported work from DTC students Sandy Enoch, Duncan Carmichael, and several DTC students of Barbara Webb.
The Roslin Institute Neurodegenerative diseases including dementia are recognised as being one of the major social and economic costs of the ageing population. To understand the mechanisms of neuronal decline it is of vital importance to identify genes that control neuronal health and thus have the potential to impact healthy ageing. In order to identify new genetic regulators of neurodegeneration the Roslin Institute has been awarded an MRC Mouse Network consortium on Neurodegenerative Processes of Ageing and Disease (nPad). The nPad consortium consists of more than 32 Edinburgh Neuroscience scientists and it aims to provide an interdisciplinary platform for mouse models of neurodegenerative disease within the Edinburgh Neuroscience community. Their principle aims are to • • • •
Identify key genes and proteins involved in triggering neurodegeneration or functioning in neuroprotection. Establish the impact of stress, infection and age on neurodegenerative processes. Determine the extent to which common and distinct molecular mechanisms underlie the early stages of a range of neurodegenerative diseases. Identify strategies for blocking neurodegenerative processes, particularly before overt pathology occurs.
It is hoped that elucidation of the molecular pathways in which these genes and proteins are involved will be a major contribution to the development of neuroprotective therapies. Researchers at the Roslin Institute (led by Prof Bruce Whitelaw) have demonstrated the utilisation of TALEN technology to target specific changes in the pig genome (Carlson et al., (2012) PNAS 109, 17382-17387). A programme of work is now underway to develop large animal models of neurodegenerative diseases. On 30th August last year, the Roslin Institute hosted the 10th Annual Scottish Neuroscience Group meeting (organised by Edinburgh Neuroscience). Plenary talks reflecting the best of British neuropathology were given by Prof James Ironside (Edinburgh) and Prof Paul Ince (Sheffield) and a wide variety of short talks from early-years researchers from Scotland. A fantastic and informative day was had by all. In December, Edinburgh Neuroscience submitted an outline proposal to Alzheimer’s research UK (led by Prof Jean Manson) for the development of a comprehensive UK Drug Discovery Institute that would integrate the latest advances in drug discovery science and clinical research across the UK. This is a joint proposal linking the University of Edinburgh and the University of Dundee’s Drug Discovery Institute. In the past year, the University of Edinburgh has seen the launch of the Centre for Comparative Pathology (www.comparativepathology.ed.ac.uk) at the Easter Bush campus. This is a unique UK centre that combines 11
traditional pathology skills with next generation sequencing, proteomics, metabolomics and high resolution imaging techniques and aims to integrate the study of human and animal disease biology to compare pathology across systems. The Roslin Institute hosted a meeting in February on Neuroimmune interactions in CNS health, degeneration and repair organised by Dr Barry McColl, Dr Neil Mabbott and Dr Lita Murphy (The Roslin Institute). This meeting highlighted the importance of inflammation and immunity in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases.
Beastly Brains’ catch the public’s eye at Wellcome Trust/BNA Wonder Street Fair, 7-11th April 2013
The Roslin Institute/R(D)SVS and Edinburgh Neuroscience were successful in receiving funding from Wellcome Trust for ‘Beastly Brains’, a hands-on workshop at the 2013 Festival of Neuroscience ‘Wonder Street Fair’ – a drop-in event for the general public held alongside the annual BNA scientific meeting at London’s Barbican Centre. Janice Barr and Nicola Stock (Public Engagement Officer at The Roslin Institute) devised the Beastly Brains workshop to explain, by activities and dialogue that “Animals have brains too!’’. It included visual elements including booklets with animal brain facts, brain beanbags demonstrating the different weights of animal brains (see photo below) and a collection of MRI images of various animal brains (provided by Dr Tobias Schwarz R(D)SVS) as well as a range of hands-on activities.
As an example of a neurodegenerative disease affecting both animals and humans “Shuggie the Sheep’’(see photo) was used to demonstrate the transmission of scrapie in sheep as a model of TSE disease. Children were encouraged to carry out a mock post mortem (suitably attired in gloves, gowns etc.) on Shuggie to look for pathological signs of scrapie (e.g.sponge brain). The mis-folded protein aspect of TSEs was explained by "make your own protein bracelets'' and the effects of protein mis-folding in the brain was demonstrated using microscope slides of a murine model of Alzheimer’s disease compared to slides of healthy brain tissue. Sixteen staff and students from The Roslin Institute’s Neurobiology Division and Edinburgh Neuroscience took time out from attending the BNA Neuroscience meeting to volunteer on the Beastly Brains stand. The brain beanbags photograph appeared on the Wellcome Trust’s blog on the first day of the Wonder Street Fair, which attracted over 5000 people. “Beastly Brains’’ also featured at the 2013 Midlothian Science Festival and The Roslin Institute/R(D)SVS Doors Open Day 2013.
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Neuroscience Day 2014 Speakers Dr Jonathan Rosand Professor
of
Neurology,
Center
for
Human
Genetic
Research,
Department of Neurology, Harvard Medical School and J. Philip Kistler Chair in Neurology, Director, Neurocritical Care Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital
[email protected] Assistant: Katrina Screen (
[email protected]) www.strokegenomics.org What patients and their genetic variation can teach us about haemorrhagic stroke Jonathan Rosand is Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, where he is the J. Philip Kistler Neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Chief of the MGH Division of Neurocritical Care and Emergency Neurology. After completing his undergraduate degree in Greek and Latin, Professor Rosand received his medical degree from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He then served as intern, resident, chief resident and fellow at MGH. Following post-doctoral research training in genetics and clinical investigation, Professor Rosand established a multi-disciplinary research group within the MGH Center for Human Genetic Research and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. He now combines research with an active practice as a vascular and critical care neurologist. Through the careful characterization of a hospital-based cohort of patients with cerebrovascular disease, Professor Rosand’s group has made substantial advances in understanding the biology of hemorrhagic stroke, led the discovery of genetic risk factors for stroke in the era of genome-wide association studies, and developed tools to support clinical decision making. The success of his group has been driven by the outstanding junior investigators it continues to attract. The author of over 150 scientific publications, Professor Rosand brought together the team that established the International Stroke Genetics Consortium in 2007.
Bonnie Auyeung Chancellor’s Fellow, Psychology
[email protected] Investigating the potential benefits of oxytocin for individuals with autism Bonnie Auyeung is a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh where her work is focused around two central themes: 1) the biological origins of autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions and 2) relieving the symptoms of these conditions which can cause difficulties in everyday life. Her interest this subject stems from clinical and research experience at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute in her home city of Los Angeles. Before coming to Edinburgh, Bonnie completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge’s Autism Research Centre and has since published extensively on the effects of the prenatal environment on later brain and behavioural development.
Emanuel Busch Chancellor’s Fellow, Centre for Integrative Physiology
[email protected] "Breathless worms run a marathon" - and what they tell us about neural mechanisms sustaining homeostasis Emanuel Busch studied microtubule dynamics during his PhD at EMBL Heidelberg. As postdoc at LMB Cambridge, he switched to neurobiology to investigate how behaviour is generated at the level of genes, neurons and circuits. In 2013 he started as Chancellor’s Fellow at the Centre for Integrative Physiology.
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To maintain homeostasis of the body, sensory systems continuously monitor key information such as ambient oxygen levels. Tonic sensors can perceive such constant information but are not well understood. How are responses to sustained sensory signals generated, and how do they reconfigure neural circuits to change behaviour? The invertebrate model organism Caenorhabditis elegans provides a unique opportunity to explore homeostatic sensing and tonic signalling in the living organism. Using calcium imaging, behavioural assays and optogenetic stimulation, I studied the mechanisms underlying avoidance of high [O2]. I found that four neurons continuously respond to ambient oxygen. Tonic signalling in these neurons is sustained by both plasma membrane Ca2+ influx and mobilisation from intracellular stores. This tonic activity is necessary and sufficient to set behavioural state according to [O2] for many minutes - even hours. The tuning of oxygen responses shows plasticity depending on experience, context, or genetic background. Strikingly, O2 responses are reprogrammed by experience in some genetic backgrounds but not others. Different alleles thus allow divergent behavioural strategies in reaction to sensory cues: either narrowly tuned and fixed to a certain concentration, or broadly tuned and flexible in changing environments.
David Carmel Lecturer, Human Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology
[email protected] Zapping the brain to mess with the mind: what TMS and SCR can teach us about consciousness David is a lecturer in the Psychology Department. Before joining the University of Edinburgh in 2012, he was a post-doctoral research scientist at the Centre for Neural Science, New York University. His main interest is consciousness: How brain activity creates it, how we become perceptually aware of the world around us, and how conscious and non-conscious neural processing differ. To investigate these issues, he uses noninvasive brain stimulation and psychophysical techniques to examine perceptual phenomena such as binocular rivalry, in which the brain must select which of two competing inputs will reach awareness; and continuous flash suppression, where certain aspects of a sensory stimulus may be processed despite complete suppression from awareness. His research has revealed the importance of high-level, non-visual cortical regions forming conscious visual representations, as well as the dissociable nature of functions such as attention and awareness.
Stella Chan Chancellor’s Fellow, Clinical Psychology
[email protected] Emotion is Risky; Handle with Care As a Researcher and Clinical Psychologist, my broad interests lie in exploring risk and resilience mechanisms underlying depression and other mood disorders, with an ultimate goal to improve wellbeing and treatment effectiveness. Adolescence is a ‘tricky’ developmental stage. On the one hand, it is the time when we see an alarming increase in emotional difficulties; on the other hand, rapid neural-cognitive maturation offers hope that young people may have a greater capacity to build psychological resilience. Much of my current work therefore focuses on understanding the risk and resilience in this developmental stage. I obtained my DPhil in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford in 2008. Supervised by Prof Catherine Harmer, I investigated emotional processing biases in a group of students at risk of developing depression, using both behavioural tasks and fMRI experiments. I then undertook professional doctoral training in Clinical Psychology. Upon qualifying as a Clinical Psychologist in 2012, I started my current position as a Chancellor’s Fellow. Building upon my previous work, I am currently launching a number of projects to investigate emotional processing in a cross-cultural context, evaluating a training programme to modify cognitive biases in adolescents, and exploring selfcompassion in relation to risk and resilience in adolescents including its connection with emotional
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processing. I am always keen to branch out my research interests and start new collaborations; do get in touch!
Javier Escudero Chancellor’s Fellow, Engineering
[email protected] Signal processing: A window into brain function Javier Escudero received an MSc in telecommunications engineering from the University of Valladolid (Spain) in 2005 and a PhD in biomedical signal processing from the same university in 2010. Afterwards, he held a postdoctoral position at the School of Computing and Mathematics of Plymouth University. In October 2013, he joined the Institute for Digital Communications, School of Engineering, as a Chancellor’s Fellow in biomedical signal processing. In collaboration with researchers at Edinburgh, across the UK and overseas, he is currently working in the processing and analysis of biomedical recordings, particularly human brain activity. By applying advanced techniques, he aims at increasing our understanding of how several brain diseases develop and progress. He has expertise in the development and application of noise reduction and feature extraction techniques to different biomedical recordings. Of particular interest is the evaluation of brain functional connectivity in both neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases, as a unifying framework to understand the brain function from a systems perspective. He is also interested in the application of pattern recognition techniques to highly-dimensional clinical datasets to support decision making and in the development of non-invasive methods to control dexterous prostheses for amputees.
Oliver Hardt Chancellor’s Fellow, Centre for Cognitive and Neural Systems
[email protected] Towards a neurobiology of forgetting Oliver Hardt is a lecturer and Chancellor’s fellow at The University of Edinburgh, where set up his lab at the Centre for Cognitive and Neural Systems in July 2013. He received his PhD from The University of Arizona, where he did his doctoral work with Prof. Lynn Nadel on the role of the hippocampus in human spatial learning and memory. His post-doctoral research was with Prof. Karim Nader at McGill University in Montréal. There, he worked on reconsolidation and memory maintenance, investigating the role of AMPA receptor trafficking in memory persistence. His lab at The University of Edinburgh is set up to investigate forgetting processes on the cellular, molecular, and brain systems level, in invertebrates, rodents, and human subjects.
Andrew Jarman Professor of Developmental Cell Biology, Centre for Integrative Physiology
[email protected] Hearing and proprioception: sensory systems in Drosophila and beyond Across organisms, development of auditory and proprioceptive systems requires proneural transcription factors encoded by Atoh1 genes (Atonal homolog 1), named after the Drosophila gene, atonal. We have long been interested in determining how atonal functions in terms of both its molecular function as a transcription factor and the identity of the targets that it activates during the process of sensory neuronal differentiation. Currently, we are working on translating some of our recent atonal discoveries from Drosophila to vertebrates, since Atoh1 is a key factor in several therapeutic strategies for tackling deafness. In Drosophila, we are also investigating atonal target genes identified in a transcriptomic analysis in order to characterise their role in constructing the specialised ciliated sensory neurons that function in mechanosensation. This latter research has unexpected implications for a human inherited disease, primary ciliary dyskinesia.
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Malcolm MacLeod Professor
of
Neurology
and
Translational
Neuroscience,
Centre
for
Clinical Brain Sciences
[email protected] Increasing value and reducing waste in laboratory research –don't get left behind Malcolm Macleod is Professor in Neurology and Translational Neuroscience at the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh, and Head of Neurological Diseases and Stroke at NHS Forth Valley. After training in Internal Medicine his PhD concerned the neuroprotective actions of FK506 and post-doctoral work in the Seckl lab defined a neuroprotective role for increased expression of the mineralocorticoid receptor. During a pivotal sabbatical year with Donnan at the National Stroke Research Institute in Melbourne he began an involvement with stroke clinical trials, and it was in an effort to identify suitable drugs for such clinical trials that he began to develop techniques to allow the systematic review and metaanalysis of data from animal studies. In 2004 he founded, with Howells, the Collaborative Approach to Meta-analysis and Review of Animal Data from Experimental Studies (CAMARADES, www.camarades.info). This approach has proved fruitful both in highlighting problems with in vivo research and in providing evidence for clinical trial design. He is one of the co- Chief Investigators of EuroHYP-1, a trial of brain cooling for stroke; a member of the UK Home Office Animals in Science Committee and of the MHRA Expert Advisory Group for Neurology, Pain and Psychiatry.
Riccardo Marioni Chancellor’s
Fellow,
Centre
for
Cognitive
Ageing
&
Cognitive
Epidemiology and Institute of Genetics & Molecular Medicine
[email protected] DNA methylation: a new predictor of death? Riccardo Marioni is a Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Edinburgh (UoE). He is based within the Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine, and the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology. He is also part-funded through the Queensland Brain Institute at the University of Queensland where he is an Adjunct Research Fellow. Riccardo comes from a background of Maths and Statistics (BSc, University of Aberdeen, 2001-2005), and Operational Research (MSc, UoE, 2005-2006). He completed his PhD, "Inflammation and cognition: The association between biomarker levels, their genetic determinants, and age-related cognitive decline" in Public Health Science (UoE, 2006-2009). His postdoctoral research included a year at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge (2009-2010). Whilst there, he was awarded an Alzheimer's Research UK fellowship (2010-2013) in conjunction with the Department of Biostatistics, INSERM U897, Bordeaux and the Department of Psychology, UoE, to develop and apply longitudinal statistical methods for cognitive ageing. Currently, Riccardo is investigating the genetic and epigenetic influences on cognitive ability and cognitive ageing in the Lothian Birth Cohorts and in Generation Scotland.
Dies Meijer Professor of Cellular Neurobiology, Centre for Neuroregeneration
[email protected] Mechanisms of myelination and synapse formation Dies Meijer received his BSc and MSc in Molecular Sciences from Wageningen University and his PhD in Molecular Genetics and Developmental Biology from Erasmus University Rotterdam. After postdoctoral training at the National
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Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill London, he established his research group in the department of Genetics at the Erasmus University Medical Center. In 2013 he moved to the University of Edinburgh, where he joined the Centre for Neuroregeneration and Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences. Dynamic interactions between neuronal cells shape key morphological and functional properties of the nervous system during ontogeny and adult life. This is most profoundly illustrated by the elaboration of the myelin sheath that surrounds many axons, and by the assembly and dynamics of the neuronal synapse. We are interested in the molecular interactions that coordinate these complex cell-cell interactions and shape the transcriptional programs of cell differentiation and homeostasis in the nervous system. One class of molecules that play important roles in these processes are the LGI (Leucine-rich Glioma Inactivated) glycoproteins. They have been implicated in tumorigenesis, hereditary forms of epilepsy, limbic encephalitis and peripheral nerve amyelination. Our work aims to identify the mechanism(s) through which LGI molecules coordinate formation and organization of the myelin sheath and contribute to synapse formation and strength. In a second line of research, we are building on our earlier work of the transcription factors Oct6 and Brn2 to define the complete transcriptional network of myelination in the peripheral nervous system.
Emily Osterweil Chancellor’s Fellow, Centre for Integrative Physiology
[email protected] Targeting translation for the treatment of fragile X and autism My research is focused on the regulation of synaptic protein synthesis in autism-related neurodevelopmental disorders. I received my PhD from Yale University in 2005, after which I joined the laboratory of Mark F. Bear at MIT to pursue my postdoctoral work. My research showed that dysregulated mRNA translation is a common contributor to both fragile X syndrome (FXS) and tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC), two leading identified monogenic causes of autism (Auerbach, Osterweil and Bear, Nature, 2011). This work also identified metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5) and the extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) pathway as critical regulators of synaptic protein synthesis, and key contributors to the pathological changes seen FXS (Dolen, Osterweil, et al., Neuron, 2007; Osterweil, Krueger, et al., J Neurosci, 2010). Building on these mechanistic studies, my most recent work has identified the HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor lovastatin as a novel therapeutic strategy for the treatment of FXS (Osterweil, Chuang, et al., Neuron, 2013), which is currently being investigated in clinical trials. As a new Chancellor’s Fellow in the Centre for Integrative Physiology and the Patrick Wild Centre, I will continue to use a combination of molecular, electrophysiological and systems-level strategies to identify how dysregulation of mRNA translation contributes to multiple genetic causes of autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders.
Steven Pollard Chancellor’s Fellow, MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine
[email protected] Transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of neural stem cell selfrenewal Steve carried out his PhD in the Department of Developmental Biology at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR). In 2002 he moved to Edinburgh to work as a postdoctoral scientist with Prof Austin Smith FRS at the Institute for Stem Cell Research (ISCR), where he investigated the conversion of embryonic stem cells to neural stem cells. In 2006 he relocated with Prof Smith to the Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research at the University of Cambridge and was awarded a Kaye Prize Fellowship (Christ’s College) and Beit Memorial Research Fellowship. He moved to the new UCL Cancer Institute and Samantha Dickson Brain Cancer Unit in February 2010, and is the Alex Bolt Research Fellow. In 2014 his laboratory relocated to the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine and Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre (University of Edinburgh). His laboratory continues to study the molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate neural stem self-renewal and differentiation. Those molecular mechanisms that initiate and sustain neural stem cell identity will likely
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be important new therapeutic targets for treatment of glioblastoma. He is supported by grants from Cancer Research UK and the The Brain Tumour Charity
Dinesh Soares Research Fellow, MRC Human Genetics Unit and Centre for Genomic & Experimental Medicine
[email protected] Functional implications from structure-based analysis of posttranslational modification and disease-associated sequence variation Dr Dinesh Soares is a Research Fellow at the MRC Human Genetics Unit and an affiliate of the Centre for Genomic & Experimental Medicine, Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine (IGMM), University of Edinburgh. Dinesh received his BSc in Biochemistry and Zoology from St. Xavier’s College, University of Mumbai, an M.Res. in Bioinformatics from the University of York, UK and subsequently a PhD in Structural Bioinformatics from the School of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, UK in 2007. He has since worked both as an experimental biochemist/biophysicist and computational structural biology specialist at the University of Edinburgh on a range of projects, but chiefly applied to the broad areas of immunology, neuroscience and psychiatry. In his current capacity, he provides research support, training, and consultation services to the IGMM research community in the areas of protein bioinformatics and has entered into several long-term scientific collaborations to analyse, predict, simulate, and illustrate protein sequence and structural biology data using computational techniques. The main focus of his research is in the application of protein structure prediction and molecular modelling methodologies to inform on protein function. These methods require extensive expert user intervention with integrated biology, chemistry, physics and computational knowledge, to fully exploit their potential. He collaborates widely with experimental laboratories where many of the hypotheses generated are tested. A number of his projects revolve around assessing the impact of missense mutations on the structure and function of the proteins discovered from next generation whole exome/genome sequencing projects for common and rare diseases. He also has a strong interest in comparative genomics and evolution of protein families and in understanding how post-translational modification underlies functional divergence among highly homologous proteins.
Tara Spires-Jones Chancellor’s Fellow, Centre for Cognitive and Neural Systems
[email protected] The intersection of amyloid beta and tau at synapses in Alzheimer's disease Our group investigates the causes of cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease and ageing. We hypothesize that the degeneration of synapses, the connections between neuronal cells in the brain, causes memory loss and that targeting the proteins that cause synaptic degeneration will allow recovery of cognitive function. The lab uses high-resolution imaging techniques to probe the mechanisms of disease progression with the aim of finding pathways to target with drugs. Our studies have demonstrated that both of the proteins involved in the neuropathological lesions in AD (amyloid beta and tau) contribute to synapse loss in Alzheimer’s disease, and further that reducing the levels of soluble amyloid beta or tau prevents synaptic degeneration.
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Poster Competition Judges This year we have 12 poster competition judges. The competition is supported by Takeda Cambridge UK, providing £1,000 worth of prizes to allow the winners to attend a scientific meeting of their choice. We are delighted that Dr Peter Maycox from Takeda Cambridge will be joining us for Neuroscience Day and helping to judge the posters. The full list of judges is: Prof Cathy Abbot, Centre for Genomics & Experimental Medicine
Dr Matt Nolan, Centre for Integrative Physiology
Dr Michael Daw Centre for Integrative Physiology
Dr Iris Oren Centre for Cognitive & Neural Systems
Dr Alison Green National CJD Surveillance Unit
Prof David Price Centre for Integrative Physiology
Dr Maria Hernanadez Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences
Dr Thomas Theil Centre for Integrative Physiology
Dr Toby Hurd MRC Human Genetics Unit
Dr Anna Williams Centre for Regenerative Medicine
Dr Peter Maycox Takeda Cambridge UK
Dr Thomas Wishart The Roslin Institute
Sponsors and Exhibitors Takeda Cambridge Peter Maycox,
[email protected], www.takedacam.com We are delighted that Takeda Cambridge is supporting our poster competition and that Dr Maycox is a poster judge this year. Takeda Cambridge and its subsidiary Takeda Singapore, have established world-class target identification and validation capabilities. Together they have developed a promising pipeline of novel drug discovery targets and compounds in such key areas of unmet medical need as CNS disorders and metabolic-related diseases. Worldwide, Takeda develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of pharmaceutical products to strive toward better health for individuals and progress in medicine.
Campden Instruments David Wrighton,
[email protected], www.campden-inst.com Campden Instruments originated on Campden Hill Road, London, in 1970 when psychologist Dr. Karl Weiss founded the company to produce the most innovative operant equipment of the time, as well as other physiological instruments for which the company soon became famous. In 1982, Campden first produced the Vibroslice which became used the world over by neuroscientists, electrophysiologists, pathologists and embryologists for the sectioning of fresh tissue. In 1998 Campden was acquired by Lafayette Instruments, this partnership with a company with a complimentary line of products and common goals and directions, has allowed us to go from strength to strength. Campden Instruments has continued to apply our engineering expertise to develop innovative, world leading instruments for Life Sciences, such as; the Bussey-Saksida Touchscreen operant box systems, which can be used for a wide range of paradigms, and the 7000smz-2 vibrating microtome, with its class leading
