January 8th, 2013

Welcome to the Fourth issue of the iBio Research Group News page. A new issue will appear on this website quarterly in September, January, March and June. Contributions for the page should be sent to G.Stafford at any time for inclusion in the next issue.

Click to skip to Grant and Staff News or Student and Post-doc news

iBio@Researcher's night

As may of you know several members of the group manned a stand at the recent Researchers night here in Sheffield.  The iBio group presented three of their research areas bacteria, neuroscience and oral cancer.   Graham, with the help from Matt, Prachi, Jennie, Rebecca, Chat, and Mike, headed up the bacteria area.    They presented an opportunity to observe a selection of different bacteria down a microscope and wowed people with a lego flagellum! In addition, the children were asked to make their own bugs, the resulting designs were weird and wonderful. The winning bug  and all the other entries can be found in our ‘bug gallery’ here. 

Also pictured is a willing participant that lives in my house.

The neuroscience area was manned by Fiona, Emma and Adam, while Craig and Katy D'Apice brought their oral cancer diagnosis kit along.

There will be a follow up event as part of 'Science Week 2013' on Monday 18th March where the School hopes to runa  stand again, so please put in diaries.  There are also opportunities to give a talk as part of the event, contact Claire Wilkinson.

Journal Club

This continues this term under the organisation of Helen and Claire.  Many thanks to all who have participated this last term.  It would be nice to see a few more faces there, particularly in order to reflect the diversity of the group.

PhD Selector role

Due to this author stepping down from the role this position has now been filled by Dr Emma Bird. 

Major MRC Grant for integrated neuroscience/cell Biology project

Drs David Andrew and Dan Lambert have been successful in the recent MRC/Astra Zeneca "Mechanisms of Disease" call. The aim was to allow academics to develop novel uses for 'shelved' AstraZeneca drugs and this was the first time a 'public-private' joint effort has been used to fund research anywhere in the world.  David and Dan have been awarded over £1 million (£1,105,000 over 3 years to be exact) for translational studies of the drug Saracatinib as a potential analgesic for bone pain in cancer spread. The project is a collaboration between the Dental School, Clinical Oncology (Sarah Danson, Rob Coleman) and Palliative Care (Sam Ahmedzai).  Well done David and Dan!

Congrats to Dr Ali Khurram on his first grant funding successes

Well done to Ali who has gained several grants recently in the area of oral cancer.  These are detailed below:

1. Utilisation of autologous oral mucosa and a biodegradable nanoporous membrane to prevent post-operative salivary leakage and associated complications in oral cancer patients. This £5000 pump-priming grant was awarded to Ali in collaboration with Prof. Sheila MacNeil and Dr. Anthony Bullock (Kroto Institute) by the Sheffield Cancer Research Centre,

2. Another pump-priming grant (£10k in this case) was awarded for his project on Engineering a lymphotactin analogue for targeting oral cancer cells by the Sheffield Crucible Programme. This project involves a collaboration with Dr. Tuck Seng Wong (Chemical and Biological Engineering) and Dr. Matthew Bryan (Materials Science and Engineering).

3. Ali was the only person to receive two grants in the Sheffield Crucible Programme. His second project (£10,000 again) was on Breaking and entering into cancer cells- designing and testing a novel anti-cancer therapy along with Dr. Maria Fragiadaki (Biomedical Science), Dr. Guillaume Hautbergue (SiTRan) and Dr. Andy Chantry (Department of Oncology).

4.  A 'Clinical Lecturer Grant' by the 'Academy of Medical Sciences/Wellcome Trust' to study 'Epithelial-fibroblast cross-talk in metastatic intranodal oral squamous cell carcinoma'. The grant is worth £30000 over two years and was very competitive.

Congratulations to Ali.

BBSRC funding for Drs Bingle

Congratulations to Drs Lynne and Colin Bingle who have just won a 3 year BBSRC grant to look at the "Role of SPLUNC1 in the host response to respiratory virus infection". They are working in collaboration with Professor James Stewart at the Vet School, University of Liverpool. The total grant is around £950,000 and Sheffield gets around £400,000.

In addition, Lynne has been asked to review grants for the EU FP7-SME2013 call, which will involve being locked in a windowless (maybe) room for three days in Brussels discussing the applications.  This should help gain insight into this process for the dept, good luck Lynne.

Funding from Wellcome and MRC for bug-binding polymer work

Well done to Prof Ian Douglas  who has been awarded a Wellcome grant worth £658,709 on the Affordable Healthcare in India programme. Ian will develop a fluorescent polymer system to detect bacterial and fungal infections in collaboration with researchers in Sheffield (Prof S Mcneil, Dr Steve Rimmer), Aston University and scientists in India.

In addition he gained an an MRC Confidence in Concept grant for approximately £35000 on enzymes for early detection of infection. In the first instance he will be developing incontinence pads that change colour to detect UTIs, also known as the 'Pam's pants' project!

MRC funding for Simon Atkins

Well done to Simon Atkins who has won an MRC Confidence in Concept Grant for £45985 for his work on Etanercept and its potential role as as a therapeutic agent following peripheral nerve injury. Fiona Boissonade is a Co-Investigator.

Marie Curie Success for Dr Keith Hunter

Congratulations to Keith and his success in gaining funding to host Dr Raghu Raghu Radhakrishnan (Manipal, India) to work on the “Role of RARβ2 in the development of Oral SCC” Total c.£250,000.  Raghu is expected to join the team in mid 2013 for 2 years, we look forward to having him around and seeing his work take off.

Funding for collaborative on HPV status and cancer

Craig Murdoch has received £185,620 in a World Cancer Research Fund award to study ‘Methyl donor status and oral HPV infection in young adults: importance to oropharyngeal cancer’. The grant is lead by Prof. Hilary Powers in the nutrition unit.

Promotion for Drs Lambert and Stafford

In other news, Dr Dan Lambert and Dr Graham Stafford have been promoted to Senior Lecturer with effect from Jan 2013.  Many congratulations to Dan from myself, thoroughly deserved.

MOVEMBER 2013

Thanks to all who donated to Movember 2013.  This years team from across the school and Faculty raised £405.  Well done to all hirsute fellows, and many thanks to the support team who manned the cake stall, baked cakes and helped with the collection boxes in the 3rd Floor office, canteen and front desk.

Standing up for Cancer

Ali and Keith were also a part of the Sheffield Cancer Research Centre's (CR-UK) publicity campaign for 'Stand up to Cancer' which was a live telethon charity event on Channel 4 to raise money towards cancer research (Photo shown). Link : http://www.shef.ac.uk/sheffield-cancer-research-centre/news-and-events/news/su2c-1.216540.

Dan Lambert in Braziiiil

In October, Dan Lambert visited collaborators in Piracicaba, Sao Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This trip, which involved giving some seminars as well as sightseeing (here he is working hard at the Christ the Redeemer statue over looking Rio), proved very useful, producing a jointly supervised PhD student based in Brazil and new opportunities for grant applications.

Welcome New PhD students

This October saw several new PhD students start in the iBio group.  They have come to us with a variety of backgrounds. 

Charlotte Green studied for both her BSc and MSc here in Sheffield and is currently working with Dr Graham Stafford and Prof Phil Wright on development of an E. coli strain for collagen secretion as part of the Synthetic Biology PhD Network

Kate Naylor again studied for her MBiolSci in Sheffield and is working with Dr Graham Stafford, Prof Ian Douglas and Craig Murdoch on investigating the molecular mechanisms of human cell interactions with the periodontal pathogen, Porphyromonas gingivalis, funded by an MDH faculty studentship.  She also gained £6150 from the Oral and Dental Research Trust to fund her work during her PhD. 

Andrew Frey's project aims to investigate sialidases in periodontal pathogens, and the effect of sialidase inhibition on pathogenicity. I am supervised by Dr Graham Stafford, Dr Craig Murdoch and Prof Ian Douglas.  He studied in Glasgow (4yr MSc) beofre working in Newcastle and Nottingham before joining us here on a GSK-BBSRC CASE award.

Sarah (Fan) Ying is primarily supervised by Prof Phil Wright but also Graham Stafford working on optimising forms of recmobinant collagen for production in bacteria.  She is self-funded after studying in her native China before coming to the UK.

Rob Bolt is supervised by Keith Hunter on a clinical CRUK project.  He is a Sheffield based clinician who has now gained one of these prestigious studentships.

Dr Jen Parker and Rebecca Lowry featured in 'The Biochemist'

Congrats to Jennie, Rebecca and Hannah who were featured in the December edition of 'The Biochemist' in an article summarising her work with Jen last summer. Hannah was working on a project initiated and completely supervised by Jen and recruited via the ThinkAhead SURE scheme.

The award was very prestigious and the success of Jen's supervision is further highlighted by Hannah's continued enthusiasm in Microbial Science.  As an aside- Looking smart in labcoats ladies!!!  see the article here

Welcome to Oral Path and MBB MSc students

A warm welcome is also extended to Esra Amoura, Eman Elmokhtar, Jemel Sultan-Khan, Nupur Maheshwari and Nazhad Mangore who make up this years MMedSci in Diagnostic Oral Pathology.

In addition, Tom Farmilo has joined the dept for 6 months as part of his MBiolSci course in MBB and is working with Dr Graham Stafford on a sialate-o-acetylesterase from Tannerella forsythia.

Congratulations Jen and Matt

Many heartfelt congratulations to Jen and Matt on tying the knot this autumn.  They were married in a civil ceremony in Norwich, where they met whilst working at the John Innes Institute.  This was followed by an evening reception of high class and quality, apart from my dancing, in a local hostelry.  I hope you will all join me in wishing them every success and happiness together.

Incoming Brazilian

From Feb 1st for 6 weeks called Lara (Maria Alencar Ramos Innocentini) studying the role of PLUNCs in uptake of strep mutans by phagocytes with Dr Lynne Bingle.

Musa M, Wilson K, Sun L, Mulay A, Bingle L, Marriott HM, Leclair EE, Bingle CD. (2012) Diferential localisation of BPIFA1 (SPLUNC1) and BPIFB1 (LPLUNC1) in the nasal and oral cavities of mice. Cell Tissue Res. 350(3):455-64. Epub 2012 Sep 1

Basran A, Jabeen M, Bingle L, Stokes CA, Dockrell DH, Whyte MK, Walmsley SR, Higgins KR, Vogel SN, Wilson HL, Prince LR, Prestwich EC, Sabroe RA, Parker LC, Sabroe I. (2012) Roles of neutrophils in the regulation of the extent of human inflammation through delivery of IL-1 and clearance of chemokines. J Leukoc Biol. Aug 17

Bingle L, Wilson K, Musa M, Araujo B, Rassl D, Wallace WA, LeClair EE, Mauad T, Zhou Z, Mall MA, Bingle CD. (2012) BPIFB1 (LPLUNC1) is upregulated in cystic fibrosis lung disease. Histochem Cell Biol. 138(5):749-58. Epub 2012 Jul 6.

González-Arriagada WA, Santos-Silva AR, Ito FA, Vargas PA, Speight PM, Bingle L, Lopes MA. (2012) Expression pattern of PLUNC proteins as an auxiliary tool for the diagnosis of high-grade mucoepidermoid carcinoma of the salivary gland. J Oral Pathol Med. 41(8):589-97.