Media

• Publications
• Latest News

Latest issue of Conway Focus available

Conway Focus Issue 15 Autumn 2011  is now available online and in print. Highlights in this issue include:

Creating the Tree of Life
An international collaboration including Conway Fellow, Dr Emma Teeling recently published details in Science of a phylogenetic framework created using large genetic datasets to better understand the evolutionary history of mammalian families and the role of the environment and events in earth history in promoting living biodiversity.

Neurotherapeutic Research Scoops Conway Festival Medal
Dr Mark Pickering was awarded the 2011 UCD Conway Festival of Research & Innovation gold medal, sponsored by Roche, for his research to identify a novel class of remyelinating agent with potential therapeutic use in myelination disorders such as multiple sclerosis. He will now represent UCD in the Roche ‘National Researcher of the Year’ competition tomorrow in the Radisson Blu Hotel, Golden Lane, Dublin.

HRB Fellowship Award for Translational Kidney Disease Research
Dr Debra Higgins has been awarded a 4-year Postdoctoral Fellowship in Translational Medicine from the Health Research Board. This will allow her to further investigate lysyl oxidase (LOX) proteins as potential biomarkers for early stage kidney disease and as a therapeutic target for treatment of chronic kidney disease (CKD).

Comparing Effectiveness in Rheumatoid Arthritis Therapeutics
In head-to head comparisons of the five therapeutic agents currently licensed in Europe for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), differences in efficacy have been highlighted in findings published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases by Professor Oliver Fitzgerald.

Clustal Omega: The Ultimate Alignment Programme?
Clustal Omega, a new programme recently described in Molecular Systems Biology by Professor Des Higgins, can align virtually any number of protein sequences quickly and delivers accurate alignments.

Helicobactor Pylori Target Key Regulator of Actin Cytoskeleton
A study led by Professor Steffen Backert proposes that the type-1 carcinogen Helicobacter pylori (Hp) targets the protein, cortactin in order to protect the gastric epithelium from excessive cell lifting and ensure sustained infection in the stomach.

Improving Psoriasis with GLP-1 Analogue Therapy 
Professor Donal O’Shea and his team have reported an improvement in the severity of psoriasis in patients following glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogue therapy. Their findings, published in Diabetologia raise the possibility of therapeutic applications for GLP-1 in inflammatory conditions due to the direct impact on innate natural killer T (iNKT) cells.

Conway Successes at SSRA and MGA Awards
Valerie Toh received the Research Excellence Gold* medal for her project entitled, “The Fate of Chemoresistance in Epithelial Ovarian Carcinoma (EOC) and Dr Len Harty received the UCD Medical Graduate Association (MGA) O’Connell Research Medal for his work entitled “Early TNF Inhibition Therapy Greatly Reduces the Impact of Inflammatory Arthritis on Personal Productivity over Time”. *Note: Reported in error as 'silver' in pdf.

Profiling Enzyme Active Site Characteristics
Professor J. Paul G. Malthouse and his team recently published findings in Biochimia et Biophysica Acta (BBA) Proteins & Proteomics on their investigation of the pH stability of the stromelysin-1 catalytic domain and its mechanism of interaction with a glyoxal inhibitor using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) studies.