UCC Conference June 2012

An international Conference organised by Professor Mary McCaffrey of Molecular Biology Laboratory BioSciences Institute, sponsored by the Biochemical Society and Science Foundation Ireland titled “RabGTPases and their Interacting Proteins in Health and Disease” will take place in UCC, June 11th-13th, 2012. 

Conference Registration Details at http://bit.ly/zj1gAj
A recent scientific journal 'Biology of the Cell' has awarded the front cover image of their February 1st 2012 issue to a confocal micrograph of a cell expressing fluorescently labelled Rab30 and the Vesicular Stomatitis Virus G protein, produced by Professor McCaffrey's research team. 

Picture L-R: Dr Michael Murphy, President, UCC and Pro Vice Chancellor, NUI with Nobel Laureate, Dr James Watson and Professor Gerald O’Sullivan, Director of the Cork Cancer Research Centre at UCC

UCC Honorary Doctorate was awarded to Nobel Laureate in UCC on Wednesday, September 8th 2010. Nobel Laureate, Dr James Watson gave the Inaugural Cancer Lecture of the Cork Cancer Research Centre at UCC.   Prof Gerald O’Sullivan, Director of the Cork Cancer Research Centre in UCC gave the address on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, on JAMES D. WATSON. Dr Watson's lecture marked the formal collaboration between the Leslie and Jean Quick Cancer Laboratories at Cold Spring Harbor (Long Island, New York) and the Cork Cancer Research Centre at UCC.  Dr Watson's lecture can be viewed at the Cork Cancer Research Centre webpage www.ccrc.ie

European Award’s First Trip to Ireland

Dr Sarfraz Ahmad of Cork Cancer Research Centre (CCRC) at UCC has been awarded the Prize for the Best paper Published on Fundamental Research, the first time that this award has been conferred on a researcher in Ireland.
The award was in recognition of the importance and quality of his excellent scientific work, published in urological literature in the year 2009” by the European Association of Urology (EAU) at its recent 25th Anniversary EAU Congress.  Dr Ahmad’s received the award for his research titled “Prostate stem cell antigen DNA vaccination breaks tolerance to self-antigen and inhibits prostate cancer growth”, published by The American Society of Gene Therapy in Molecular Therapy.
Prostate cancer is known to have a number of molecules (antigens) specifically associated with malignant cells (eg. PSA, PSMA). These antigens can up-regulate the immune system to target and destroy cells displaying these molecules. The CCRC has developed a DNA vaccination strategy involving administration of prostate antigen DNA to muscle by electric pulses. This strategy has been shown to eliminate or reduce prostate tumours in preclinical models.  This research offers a strategy to target any prostate cancer cells which may have already disseminated through the body pre-surgical intervention and has now been designated for development for human clinical trial.

Molecules to Medicine Conference UCC, June 16 2010

The College of Medicine and Health invite early career researchers to submit abstracts of their research studies for oral or poster presentation at the Molecules to Medicine Research Conference being held in Brookfield Health Sciences Complex at University College Cork on 16th June 2010.

A gold medal will be awarded for the best oral presentation from an early career researcher (post-graduate student or early stage post-doctoral researcher) in each of the following four themes. 
08:45-09:00: Opening - Prof Michael Berndt
09:00-10:45 Measurement in Healthcare Research
09:00-09:45 Keynote Speaker: Prof. Pamela Enderby, University of Sheffield: “Improving clinical services by using information and data to inform practice”.
09:45:10:00 Presentation 1 - Damhnait Ni Mhurchu: “A Study of expressive language in narrative older children with spina bifida”
10:05-10:20 Presentation 2 – Ciara O‟Toole: “Measuring Bilingual Language Acquisition”
10:25-10:40 Presentation 3 – Vera McCarthy: “Has your work worked you too hard”

11:15-13:00 Optimising Drug Delivery and Therapeutics
11:15-12:00 Keynote Speaker: Mr. Oliver Boucher, Sigmoid Pharma: “New Drug Delivery Opportunities – Meeting the Medical Need”
12:00-12:15 Presentation 4 – Michelle Cronin: “Systemic Tumour Targeting with Orally Administered Non-Pathogenic Bacteria”
12:20-12:35 Presentation 5 – Dawn Kelly: “Optimising pharmaceutical solids; a critical step on the route from molecules to medicines.”
12:40-12:55 Presentation 6 – Martin O‟Neill: “Cyclodextrin Mediated gene Delivery to the Intestine – Predicting Cellular Uptake Pathways and Transfection Complex Stability”

14:00-15:45 Immunology and Infectious Diseases
14:00-14:45 Keynote Speaker: Dr. Simon Draper, University of Oxford: “Clinical translation of a molecularly designed blood stage malaria vaccine”
14:45-15:00 Presentation 7 – Brendan Palmer: “Temporal mapping of quaisispecies complexity in chronic Hepatitis C infection”
15:05-15:20 Presentation 8 – Tamara Ringwood: “Seroprevalence of anti-Yersinia antibodies in Ireland”
15:25-15:40 Presentation 9 – Andrew Coveney: “Unravelling a novel role of myeloid-related proteins 8/14 (Mrp 8/14) in self-tolerance and cross-tolerance to gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria”

16:15- 17:55 Gut Health
16:15-17:00 Keynote Speaker: Prof. Paul Ross, Teagasc, Moorepark and Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre: “Discovery of the antimicrobial Thuricin CD which specifically kills Clostridium difficile”
17:00-17:15 Presentation 10 – Dr Eileen Murphy, Alimentary Pharmary Health and APC, UCC: “The bacteriocin-producing lactobacillus salivarius UCC 118 alters the composition of the gut microbiota in diet-induced obese mice”
17:20-17:35 Presentation 11 – Dr Siobhan Cusack, Eldermet: “Compositional analysis of the human gut microbiota in elderly Irish subjects”
17:40-17:55 Presentation 12 – Dr Declan McKernan, APC, UCC: “Altered Toll-like Receptor Responses in Irritable Bowel Syndrome”

From each theme, a winning presentation was chosen by the keynote speakers and the presenter was awarded the Michael C Berndt Gold Medal for Research Innovation. The Gold Medal Winners were Ciara O’ Toole, Dept of Speech and Hearing Sciences, UCC (Measuring Bilingual language acquisition ); Martin O’Neill, School of Pharmacy, UCC (Cyclodextrin mediated gene delivery to the intestine- predicting cellular uptake pathways and transfection complex stability); Andrew Coveney, Dept of Academic Surgery, CUH (Unravelling a novel role of myeloid-related proteins Mrp8/14 in self-tolerance and cross tolerance to Gram negative and Gram positive bacteria) and Dr Declan Mc Kernan, Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre, UCC (Altered Toll Like Receptor responses in Irritable Bowel Syndrome).

Following judging, three posters were awarded prizes:
1st Prize: Carola Murphy, Gerard Moloney, Lindsay Hall, Aoife Quinlan, Emilie Faivre, Pat Casey, Fergus Shanahan, Silvia Melgar and Ken Nally. Development and characterisation of a novel in vivo model to track neutrophil migration in experimental colitis using bioluminescence imaging.
2nd Prize: Murphy, M., Byrne, S. and Bradley, C.P. Does cash payment influence a GP’s decision to prescribe antibiotics?
3rd Prize: Una Leonard, Catherine Pettigrew, Nicola Bessell and Will Hutch. Syntactic Reactions: The effect of determiner-priming on visual mass noun recognition speeds.

The College of Medicine and Health gratefully acknowledges the support of our conference sponsors Pfizer Corporation, Cruinn Diagnostics, Miltenyi Biotec, BD and Caliper LifeSciences.

All abstracts at http://www.ucc.ie/en/CollegesandDepartments/MedicineandHealth/Research/MoleculestoMedicineResearchConference2010/
For further information contact Dr Colman Casey colman.casey@ucc.ie

Yoghurt bacteria perfect for delivering cancer treatment

A bacteria commonly found in probiotic yoghurts has been shown to be a safe and effective way to deliver gene therapies to treat cancer, by a research team at the Cork Cancer Research Centre, UCC. The research, funded by the Health Research Board, will be published in the Nature journal - Molecular Therapy (13th April 2010). “The main goal of cancer treatment is to focus therapy on tumours without harming healthy cells,” says Dr Mark Tangney, Principal Investigator at Cork Cancer Research Centre, UCC.  “When a patient’s cancer has spread, then ideally, a treatment should be administered throughout a patient’s body (e.g. intravenous administration) to allow treatment of any tumours present, including secondary tumours at early stages of development. However, current chemotherapy drugs administered in this fashion are toxic to many healthy cell types, often resulting in severe side effects for the patient.  This is why we are so excited about this research.  We have shown that harmless bacteria (bifidobacteria) have a natural ability to travel through the body and grow specifically inside tumours.  We have demonstrated for the first time that following ingestion of bifidobacteria in large numbers, these bacteria can leak out from the gut into the blood and grow inside tumours throughout the body where they can produce whatever we want. We can now genetically engineer these bacteria so that they will pump out anti-cancer agents specifically inside tumours,” explains Dr Tangney. “These new results suggest we can overcome a major barrier to achieving an efficient and safe gene medicine for cancer.”  Ingesting the manipulated bacteria is also a more effective way of delivering the cancer therapy as it allows larger therapeutic doses to be given and is easier for patients to handle.

New approaches to cancer cell and gene therapy have potential in sustaining both longevity and the quality of life for cancer sufferers.  All cancers have the potential to be treated by cell and gene therapy. For further information contact Dr Mark Tangney, CCRC  m.tagney@ucc.ie