Controlling the fate of cancer cells with SF3B1 modulators
Posted 16th August 2019 by Jane Williams
Andrew Cook has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for over 20 years. Throughout his career, he has endeavoured to do things differently, a little out of the ordinary, leading him to his work at H3 Biomedicine on splice modulators. “Part of the reason it attracted me” he says, “is it’s so different. It’s a natural product-based drug discovery effort, and I had never done that before”.
Harnessing the power of RNA for a healthy gut microbiome
Posted 13th February 2019 by Joshua Sewell
I was a scientist at Los Alamos National Lab in the US when I identified a science-based personalized diet that completely cured my early onset arthritis. I realized that the gut microbiome would play a central role in personalized nutrition and redirected all my science projects towards it. We desperately needed better technology for analysing the gut microbiome and metatranscriptomics offers the best value. It is better than 16S or metagenomic sequencing in two important aspects:
Skin Microbiome: Cosmeceutical Development, Sample Collection & Storage and Patient Stratification
Posted 2nd January 2019 by Jane Williams
Whilst microbiome as a whole is gaining traction, developments in wound healing, skin ageing and inflammation have garnered a wider understanding of the skin microbiome in health and disease. If you were unable to attend the dedicated Skin Microbiome track at the 6th Microbiome R&D and Business Collaboration Forum: USA, we have made these slides from Madhuri Jasti, Mark Wilson and Kausar Malik available here.
DNA is no longer just ACGT: synthetic DNA is here to stay
Posted 23rd November 2018 by Jane Williams
One of the most amazing aspects surrounding us is life itself – not just humans, but the environment: trees, flowers, insects, animals and even bacteria. They all share one central molecule which is crucial for their existence.
Microfluidics: How origami is saving lives in Africa
Posted 7th November 2018 by Jane Williams
This article was originally published by The Scottish Funding Council in May 2018 and is published here with permission.
A folded piece of paper could save lives in Uganda, says Glasgow University’s Prof Jonathan Cooper.
Apac is a district in central Uganda sitting just north of the equator. Its main village is surrounded by Lake Kyoga and the Arocha and Wirewiri swamps. It also has an unusually hot microclimate producing an environment that results in the region having the highest number of mosquito bites per person in the world – on average, each person is bitten five times per night, year-round. The local health workers refer to these as “innoculations” – for, despite years of mass drug administrations, insecticide spraying and distribution of nets, it remains one of the most malarial districts in the world.
Exploring the World’s Largest Biobanks
Posted 5th October 2018 by Jane Williams
There are currently more than 120 biobanks worldwide. While most focus on genomic research and personalised medicine, biobanks range in size. Small operations have just a few freezers which are kept in a researcher’s laboratory, a clinical laboratory, or a pathology suite, while the larger, commercial ones support large clinical and epidemiological suites. In addition, the storage of samples tends to vary:
Dissecting gene expressions in nucleus versus cytoplasm with single-cell resolution
Posted 4th July 2018 by Jane Williams
Single-cell ITP for physical fractionation of cytoplasmic versus nuclear nucleic acids (NAs)
Single-cell analyses have become powerful tools to explore the heterogeneity of cell populations such as tumours and developing embryos. Microfluidics have significantly contributed to this field, particularly to reduce the cost and improve the throughput of single-cell RNA sequencing and DNA sequencing.
Why NOW for Targeting RNA with Small Molecules?
Posted 18th May 2018 by Jane Williams
Before tackling the question of why everyone thinks drugging RNA is so hard, one might ask why drugging proteins is considered to be so easy (at least by comparison). Put differently, why were proteins first?