News

Nana-Maria Gruening receives Otto Hahn Medal

Dr Jenny Barna — 2013-06-10T14:16:13Z

On Wednesday 5th June, Dr. Nana-Maria Gruening was honoured with the Otto Hahn Medal by the Max Planck Society, Germany. Each year, up to 30 medals are given to young scientists of the Max Planck Society for outstanding achievements in their PhD projects. The award also includes 7500 Euro as further recognition of the scientist’s accomplishment.

Dr. Gruening showed that primary metabolism is involved in the regulation of redox homeostasis in yeast cells. She discovered that the enzyme pyruvate kinase coordinates energy- with redox metabolism, a mechanism that protects cells from oxidative damage when cellular respiration is increased. Pyruvate kinase plays a crucial role in the Warburg effect - the most important metabolic change during tumour development. As a result, Dr. Gruening's work enables a big step forward in understanding this metabolic adaptation.

Her PhD project was carried out in the group of Markus Ralser in Berlin. Dr. Gruening works now as a post-doc in Dr. Ralser's group here in the Department of Biochemistry, Cambridge.

Award for Kevin Brindle

Dr Jenny Barna — 2013-05-31T13:58:05Z

At the annual meeting of the society in Turin this week Kevin Brindle was awarded the European Society for Molecular Imaging Award 2013.

£1m award for diabetes and obesity research

Dr Jenny Barna — 2013-05-13T08:55:00Z

Jules Griffin and researchers at MRC Human Nutrition Research have been awarded £1 million by the Medical Research Council to set up a programme of research based on human interventional studies into aspects of type 2 diabetes and obesity. The work will utilize state of the art mass spectrometry to follow fat metabolism in human studies of the metabolic syndrome.

New understanding of DNA replication

Dr Jenny Barna — 2013-04-03T11:20:00Z

Luca Pellegrini's group has just published a paper in the new open-access journal Elife. Using a combination of crystallographic, biochemical and computational evidence they have shed light on the initiation of DNA synthesis in eukaryotic replication. The DNA Polymerase α (Pol α)/primase complex initiates DNA synthesis. In the complex, Pol α and primase cooperate in the production of RNA-DNA oligonucleotides that prime synthesis of new DNA. The group solved crystal structures for the catalytic core of yeast Pol α by itself, bound to an RNA primer/DNA template and extending an RNA primer with deoxynucleotides. Using additional biochemical and computational data they showed that Pol α recognizes the A-form RNA/DNA helix and then synthesis of B-form DNA terminates primer synthesis. The release of the completed RNA-DNA primer by the Pol α/primase complex suggests a simpler model of primer transfer. The proposed mechanism of nucleotide polymerization by Pol α might contribute to genomic stability by limiting the amount of inaccurate DNA to be corrected.

Biochemistry on Everest

Dr Jenny Barna — 2013-03-28T14:05:00Z

While we shiver in an unseasonably cold late March in the UK, Jules Griffin has been on Everest! At Namche, about 3800 m above sea level Jules and student Tom Ashmore started testing themselves, acting as guinea pigs for their own medical research. Experiments continue at Everest Base Camp at 5300 m.

The Xtreme Everest 2 expedition they have joined aims to understand how the human body is affected by low oxygen, called hypoxia, to help to find new treatments for intensive care patients.

The low oxygen conditions at high altitude on Everest mimic what happens to people in hospital intensive care. The lack of oxygen reaching the body's vital organs is a common problem for such patients and can lead to organ failure and death. It is very difficult to study critically ill patients, so we don't really know why some people affected survive and some die. Xtreme Everest scientists are monitoring how healthy volunteers naturally adapt to the low oxygen concentrations found at high altitudes.

Jules has also been studying how the body metabolizes fat and hopes his research on Everest will shed light on a number of important disease processes including those involved in obesity and wasting.

Read more at the MRC Human Nutrition Research website.

£5.3M award for cancer imaging

Dr Jenny Barna — 2013-03-22T18:25:00Z

Kevin Brindle has been awarded a Wellcome Trust Strategic Translation Award, with a value of over £4 million, which with a contribution from CRUK totals £5.3 million.

Through a research agreement with GE Healthcare the Brindle lab have been developing metabolic imaging using MRI and hyperpolarised 13C-labelled cell substrates as a clinical tool for monitoring tumour responses to treatment. Their preclinical studies demonstrated the potential of the technique and they are now translating this work to the clinic.

The project, which is an industry-academic-NHS collaboration (GE Healthcare, University of Cambridge, Addenbrooke's Hospital) involves the purchase and installation of a clinical polarizer (funded by CRUK), and an investigation of its capability for detecting treatment response in lymphoma, glioma and breast cancer patients.

The award will link the departments of Biochemistry, Radiology, CRUK Cambridge Institute, Haematology and Oncology.

George Salmond elected Fellow of American Academy of Microbiology

Dr Jenny Barna — 2013-03-14T11:35:00Z

George Salmond is amongst eighty-seven microbiologists who have been elected to Fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology. Fellows of the Academy are elected annually through a highly selective, peer-review process, based on their records of scientific achievement and original contributions that have advanced microbiology. There are over 2,000 Fellows representing all sub-specialties of microbiology, including basic and applied research, teaching, public health, industry, and government service.

Biochemistry PhD student wins Access to Understanding prize

Dr Jenny Barna — 2013-03-12T15:25:00Z

Ian Le Guillou, who has been studying for his PhD in Ernest Laue's group, has won joint second prize in a science writing competition. Entrants to the Access to Understanding competition were challenged to summarise a cutting-edge research article, communicating in a simple and accessible way what the research is, and why it matters, for a non-specialist audience. The overall winner was another Cambridge student. Emma Pewsey, a PhD student in Material Sciences, was selected from among 400 entries from around the world for her entry explaining research that investigated the causes of hip fracture in the elderly. Two other entries from Cambridge were also shortlisted. You can read the winning and shortlisted articles online.

The Access to Understanding competition is a partnership between Europe PubMed Central (PMC) and The British Library’s Science Team. The awards ceremony, which was held on March 11th, is one of a series of events during the British Library’s ‘Inspiring Science’ season. Inspiring Science will challenge, entertain and engage audiences, providing opportunities to debate, discuss, participate and learn how science can tell us about ourselves and the world around us.

Ian's article was about the paper NLK is a novel therapeutic target for PTEN deficient tumour cells by Ana M. Mendes-Pereira, Christopher J. Lord, and Alan Ashworth, PLoS One (2012) 7(10) e47249 and this article was selected for inclusion in the competition by Breakthrough Breast Cancer.

Bacterial banter: a target for therapeutics

Dr Jenny Barna — 2013-02-27T17:40:00Z

The research in George Salmond's and Martin Welch's groups, amongst others, has featured in the latest edition of the University's Research Horizons magazine and is featured online on the University's Research web site.

New tool in the fight against tropical diseases

Dr Jenny Barna — 2013-02-27T17:30:50Z

Steve Oliver's group, working with Mark Carrington and colleagues elsewhere, have developed a novel tool that exploits baker’s yeast to expedite the development of new drugs to fight multiple tropical diseases, including malaria, schistosomiasis, and African sleeping sickness. The unique screening method uses yeasts which have been genetically engineered to express parasite and human proteins to identify chemical compounds that target disease-causing parasites but do not affect their human hosts. Read the full story on the University news web site.

Tom Blundell reappointed as Chair of BBSRC

Dr Jenny Barna — 2013-02-27T11:14:38Z

The Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts, has announced the reappointment of Professor Sir Tom Blundell as Chair of BBSRC. For more details see the press release.

African trypanosome receptor structure revealed

Dr Jenny Barna — 2013-02-16T20:59:32Z

African trypanosomes infect humans and animals, causing disease and severely affecting the agriculture of rural sub-Saharan Africa. The trypanosomes are protected by a densely packed surface monolayer of variant surface glycoprotein (VSG). The haptoglobin hemoglobin receptor (HpHbR) within this VSG coat is used by the trypanosome for haem acquisition. HpHbR is exploited by the human innate immunity molecule, trypanolytic factor 1 (TLF1), which enters the trypanosome by binding the HpHbR. A collaboration between Mark Carrington’s lab and the labs of Matt Higgins in Oxford and Jayne Raper in New York, published recently in PNAS, has determined the structure of HpHbR, revealing an elongated three α-helical bundle with a small membrane distal head. The HpHb-binding site has been mapped and a single HbHpR polymorphism unique to human infective T. brucei gambiense has been shown to be sufficient to reduce binding of both HpHb and TLF1, modulating ligand affinity in a delicate balancing act that allows HpHb uptake but avoids TLF1 uptake. This work is important in understanding the human infectivity of T. brucei gambiense.

Tom Blundell speaks about drug design on Darwin Day

Dr Jenny Barna — 2013-02-13T00:00:00Z

On February 12th Sir Tom Blundell spoke about drug design and the evolution of drug resistance at a lecture to celebrate Darwin Day, and was featured on Radio 4. You can read and hear more on the BBC web site and also find a full podcast of the lecture.

Potential new target in fight against superbug

Dr Jenny Barna — 2013-01-30T13:40:00Z

Martin Welch and his group have discovered how an antibiotic-resistant superbug exploits oxygen-limited conditions in the lungs of patients with severe respiratory disease to thrive. It is hoped the discovery could lead to new ways to target the Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacterium, which is responsible for six per cent of healthcare associated infections in NHS patients and has a widespread resistance to many antibiotics. Infection by P. aeruginosa is a major cause of death in patients with cystic fibrosis. The research was funded by the BBSRC and published in Open Biology. See the full story on the University research news web site.

Detecting quadruplex DNA

Dr Jenny Barna — 2013-01-25T10:25:00Z

The recent success in Shankar Balasubramanian's group, based in the Department of Chemistry and the CRUK Cambridge Research Institute, in showing that four-stranded ‘quadruple helix’ DNA structures exist within human cells, has relied on production of anti-quadruplex DNA antibodies using technology developed by John McCafferty's group in the Department of Biochemistry. The two group leaders have just jointly published a paper online in Nature Chemistry. For the full story see the University news web site.