Thank you for a lovely card Gemma 🙂
We really enjoyed hosting you in the lab, the project chats, the after work adventures and the amazing lab meeting cakes. We’ll miss you. It was a great project that really pushed our research forward, thank you very much for all your hard work!
Wishing you all the best in the future. Stay in touch!
Well done Roufaida and Fran for writing a very comprehensive review of kinesin involvement in skeletal disease. It highlights several novel roles for kinesins in skeletal development and provides great background for our current work.
Full text available here: https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/ajpcell.00613.2023
We are pleased to announce that Rachel Pearson successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled “Investigating the role of Asporin in musculoskeletal development”.
Congratulations Rachel, well done!
We would also like to extend a thank you to the thesis examiners, Dr Sarah Rice from Newcastle University and Dr Blandine Poulet from the University of Liverpool. Thank you very much for conducting the viva voce!
We had a great time at the “The Dynamic Matrix: Mechanics, Ageing and Repair” meeting in Bristol. We were there 9th-10th April for the Annual Spring Meeting of the British Society for Matrix Biology (BSMB). We presented 3 posters, contributed one report, discussed multiple collaborations and had a great time listening to the amazing science by Prof Elizar Zelzer, Prof Farshid Guilak, Dr Joe Swift, Prof Tonia Vincent and Prof Reinhard Faessler, amongst others.
Well done and thanks to Francesca, Marc and Roufaida for presenting a poster and generating interesting discussions!
We had a great time at the 1st Annual Meeting of the CHANGE project, organised in Vienna by Evercyte, one of our partners in the network. Vienna is an amazing city!
We had very productive 3 days talking about science, seeing the progress of our DCs, networking and training in public engagement, ethics, policy and EU regulations.
Our students have made great progress in their first year of PhD, made great friends in their network and during their secondments, acquired new skills and learnt a lot of techniques. They also presented at national and international conferences, engaged with patients and public, and contributed to book chapters and invited reviews.
We can’t wait to see what the second year brings. The next annual meeting will be in Krakow, can’t wait!
The Great Hall at the Discovery Museum was abuzz with science and exciting conversations last Sunday as Newcastle university researchers, rare disease patients and members of the public gathered to celebrate the International Rare Disease Day.
With 104 attendees and 40 enthusiastic scientists, a wonderful panel debate on achievements and challenges in rare disease research, exciting hands on experiments (building a 3D skin model, DNA extraction, osteoarthritis diagnosis, muscle MRI scans, art installations and many more) and lovely food, we had an amazing day!
We’d like to thank all the presenters and attendees for participating in our event. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did, and we hope to see you next year again!
Some feedback from our participants:
[The event] was great, no need for improvement!
Thank you for hosting such an amazing event!
Loved each and every bit.
Thank you for recommending this, I had a really great time! […] Everyone there was really nice and the activities were so fun
Many thanks to you all for giving your weekend to educate and entertain us.
We’re organising Genetics Matters again! Genetics Matters is a free annual event showcasing rare disease and genetic research at Newcastle, with hands-on experiments, laboratory demonstrations, scientist talks and free refreshments.
We’ll be at the Discovery Museum on the 25th of February, join us at http://tinyurl.com/3f4hwkks
Regenerative Medicine, Stem Cells, Transplantation (RMSCT) are offering one PhD studentship in Stem Cell Biology for entry in September 2024. They will be supported by the Newcastle Fund. This is possible due to the generosity of an anonymous benefactor.
The studentship will be awarded in open competition. The studentship is available for projects in diverse areas of Stem Cell Biology. Established research leaders from across the University will supervise the studentship.
Each studentship provides:
To apply, visit: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/medical-sciences/research/research-themes/regenerative-medicine/studentship/
Applications should be submitted by 29 February 2024
One of the 3 projects that are offered is:
Osteoarthritis is a common debilitating musculoskeletal disease that affects over 9 million people in the UK, yet there are no drugs that slow disease progression. The disease is typified by loss of cartilage, the tissue which allows joints friction-free movement. Genetic risk loci, along with epigenetic changes, for Osteoarthritis occur predominately in non-coding regulatory regions of the genome, which control target gene transcription. Many of these risk loci are also linked to skeletal developmental and are associated with adult height and joint shape. However, we still need to identify the target genes of these osteoarthritis-associated regulatory regions to know how these contribute to joint formation and to increase our understanding of osteoarthritis susceptibility.
Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) can now be selectively differentiated in a process that recapitulates the developmental system of limb-bud formation to produce accurate articular pre-chondrocytes, cartilage cells. Importantly, hPSCs are amenable to genome-editing (CRISPR) and CRISPR-mediated gene regulation.
In collaboration with colleagues at the University of Manchester, the student will establish hPSC differentiation protocols and use these cells to generate a 3D genomic interaction map to utilise with established CRISPR-editing, CRISPR-gene-activator and CRISPR-gene-inhibitor systems to functionally define important osteoarthritis regulatory regions and effector genes.
This is an opportunity to work on a highly interdisciplinary project where a successful PhD student will learn fundamental molecular, cell biology and bioinformatic skills. Importantly, they will receive training in stem cell biology with a strong focus on aiming to improve clinical outcomes for patients with common and rarer skeletal diseases.
Our annual International Rare Disease Day event is back. In 2024 it will be bigger and better, with more research tables, more satellite events and really interesting talks. Watch this space!