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 re-myelinating 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, which takes place on November 8th in the Radisson Blu, Golden Lane, Dublin.
A postdoctoral researcher in the Neurotherapeutics Research Group led by Conway Fellow, Dr Keith Murphy, Dr Pickering (pictured left) staved off his competitors and impressed the judging panel with a concise overview of this research project and its innovative potential.
He explained that although therapeutic agents currently on the market, such as interferon beta and natalizumab, produce significant benefits in multiple sclerosis, they are limited in targeting inflammation and immune-mediated damage, and are ineffective in progressive disease types. The Neurotherapeutics Research Group has instead focused on finding an agent that can induce remyelination.
Using an in-vitro system, the team screened for potential remyelinating agents before progressing to validate results in-vivo. Outlining their findings, Mark said, “We saw that UCD-MS1 accelerated myelin repair after cuprizone-induced, non-inflammatory demyelination in murine models. The pro-myelin properties of UCD-MS1 may not be unique to this compound as we have identified three structurally related compounds which display similar efficacy in vitro.”
He believes that UCD-MS1 may be useful as a single therapy in myelination disorders, or synergistically with an immunomodulatory agent. Additionally, UCD-MS1 might be deployed in non-inflammatory myelinopathies for which no therapies currently exist.
In total, thirty abstracts were shortlisted for presentation to judging panels in the six moderated poster sessions held over the course of the conference on September 15th in UCD Conway Institute. The six category winners were Drs Mark Pickering, Jens Rauch, Fiona Furlong, Luis Alvarez, Alex Cheong and Emma Börgeson.
Delegates at the conference also heard invited lectures from Conway Fellows, Professors Donal O'Shea, Helen Roche, Denis Shields, Stephen Pennington as well as Drs James O'Gara, Keith Murphy and Orina Belton. The plenary lectures were delivered by Professors Romas J. Kazlauskas, University of Minnesota; William Gallagher, University College Dublin and Rick Morimoto, Northwestern University, Illinois.
The research interests of Prof. Kazlauskas lie in enzyme modelling and design for the purposes of sustainable or green chemistry and he gave an overview of the work by his laboratory to engineer new catalytic activity into enzymes.
A major focus of Prof. Gallagher’s research is the identification and validation of candidate biomarkers of breast cancer and melanoma, with particular emphasis on translation of transcriptomic and proteomic datasets into clinically relevant assays. His plenary lecture gave the delegates an insight into biomarker and drug development using case study examples.
Prof. Morimoto is widely recognised for his research to understand the processes by which cells sense, respond and adapt to environmental and physiological challenges. He described in his lecture how protein misfolding and damage causes stress on cells and consequently impacts on neuronal function and the lifespan of the organism as a whole.
The primary sponsors of the 11th annual UCD Conway Festival of Research & Innovation were Cruinn Diagnostics Ltd, Roche Diagnostics Ltd and Bio-Sciences.
Neurobiology - Dr Mark Pickering
Identification of potential remyelinating disease modifying agents for multiple sclerosis
Cancer & Therapeutics I - Dr Jens Rauch
c-Myc regulates RNA splicing of the A-Raf kinase and its inactivation if the ERK pathway
Cancer & Therapeutics II - Dr Fiona Furlong
Predicting chemo-response in serous papillary epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC)
Infection, Immunity & Inflammation - Dr Luis Alvarez
Disruption of Campylobacter jejuni phosphotyrosine signaling by mucosal hydrogen peroxide
Systems Biology - Dr Alex Cheong
NFκB and HIF display synergistic behaviour during hypoxic inflammation
Diabetes & Vascular Biology - Dr Emma Börgeson
Lipoxin A4 and benzo-lipoxin A4 attenuate experimental renal fibrosis
