News from the Oral Disease Research Group- June 2010
Oral Disease Group News: Issue 3, June 2010
Welcome to the second issue of the Oral Disease Group News page. A new issue will appear on this website quarterly in September, December, March and June. Contributions for the page should be sent to G.Stafford at any time for inclusion in the next issue.
Jump to section of interest:
Grant news
Staff news
Student and Post-doc news
Yorkshire Cancer Research Funding for Investigation of tumour metastasis mechanisms
Congratulations to Dr Craig Murdoch & Professor Martin Thornhill for gaining 1 year of funding (£48,375) to Investigate mechanisms of tumour metastasis: Binding of tumour cells to the endothelium.
NIHR Funding for improvement of detection methods for oral cancer
Members of the cluster has recently been awarded a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)
Invention for innovation (i4i) award under the Programme for Future Product Development Funding Stream for 1 year worth £98,152. This work will examine the use of impedance spectroscopy to detect neoplastic oral lesions. The Prinicipal investigator on this work is Professor M. Thornhill, with Co-I's: C. Murdoch, P. Speight, P. Highfield, J. Tidy, B. Brown, C. Yeoman and A. Hegarty.
Faculty Knowledge Exchange Funding for investigation of novel diagnostic assays
This will be a collaborative project between Dr Simon Whawell and Dr Kate Dempsey, an assay development scientist from D3 technologies, Glasgow. Their work is aimed at using the technology employed by D3 to aid in diagnosis of periodontitis and oral cancer.
CILASS SURE Summer Studentship awards
Dr Dan Lambert and Dr Graham Stafford keep up the tradition of hosting promising undergraduate scientists in the cluster labs with both having been awarded CILASS SURE summer studentships worth £1080 each, to host Genevieve Melling and Simon Hall. Genevieve will be carrying out a project entitled `The miR-145/143 cluster is a critical regulator of cancer metastasis´ and Simon will be undertaking the project `Metabolomic study of oral campylobacter species that are involved in periodontitis and Crohn's disease´ in collaboration with Prof. David Kelly in MBB.
Seedcorn funding for summer studentship awards
Dr Graham Stafford is also joint supervisor of a project that is a spin-out from the MATEs synthetic biology network to investigate a range of bacteria as sources of adhesive compounds for Tissue Engineering with Dr Stephen Rolfe and Dr Wei Huang in APS and the Kroto Institute respectively.
Welcome back
We would like to welcome back Dr Joey Shepherd from her maternity leave, and also congratulate her on the publication of her work in The Journal of the American Chemical Society
(J Am Chem Soc. 2010 Feb 17;132(6):1736-7) entitled: "Binding bacteria to highly branched poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide) modified with vancomycin induces the coil-to-globule transition".
We also welcome Dr Prachi Stafford on a 3 year contract to work with Dr Dan Lambert and Dr Graham Stafford on the Dunhill funded miRNA and bacterial-host interaction project.
Arise Dr Aom
Congratulations to Suttipalin Suwannakul- Aom, on the award of her PhD in April. She came through her viva with minor corrections and she has now taken up a position as lecturer in Thailand. Her work on bistable invasive populations of P. gingivalis under the supervision of Professor Ian Douglas, Dr Graham Stafford and Dr Simon Whawell is now under review for publication (Watch this space!).
Very Important People!
Congratulations are extended for the award of Wellcome Trust Value In People (VIP) Bridging funds to Dr Stuart Hunt of £14,985 to continue his work with Dr Dan Lambert on microRNA regulation of oral cancer cell motility.
We also are very happy to be welcoming Sumita Roy back to the laboratory of Dr Graham Stafford for one year from October 1st on a Wellcome VIP postdoctoral Fellowship (worth provides £46,695) to work on sialic acid transport and host interactions of the periodontal pathogen Tannerella forsythia.
Masters students galore!
We would like to welcome a number of MSc and MMedSci project students to the cluster laboratories:
Bonan Sun: Investigation of miRNA responses to periodontal infection with Dr Dan Lambert and Dr Graham Stafford
Tasnuva Kabir: Role of miR143 in head and neck cancer with Dr Dan Lambert
Ghadeer Al Zayer: Production of chimeric proteins for use in tissue engineering applications with Dr Graham Stafford
Iwin K K Nayak: PLUNCs and the MECT1-MAML2 translocation in Salivary Gland Tumours with Dr Lynne Bingle
Ahmed Al-Kishi: Expression of endothelial-binding adhesion molecules by oral cancer cells
with Dr Craig Murdoch
Sanad Rashed: Surface glycosylation of oral bacteria
with Dr Graham Stafford and Professor Ian Douglas
Zahra Abdalla: Role of the chemokine XCR1 in metastasis of oral cancer with
Professor PM Farthing and Lynne Bingle
Shirin Taheri: CD56 expression in odontogenic tumours
with Dr Keith Hunter