Awards and Prizes
Published: 31 October 2017
Congratulations on the recent achievements of our members of staff and the Institute
Dr Stephen Tait Group – Florian Bock
Florian Bock just received a funding from Tenovus Scotland, his project is titled "Investigating MEK inhibition as a means to improve BH3 mimetic anti-cancer therapy"
Dr Imran Ahmad Chairmans Award 2017
Imran the NHSGGC Chairman’s Award in December for setting up the West of Scotland Robotic Prostatectomy service for men with prostate cancer:
Was great night and glad to be recognised for the world class prostatectomy service the team and I have set up at QEUH to serve the patients from the WoS.
Prof Anthony Chalmers Group
MVLS cancer researchers awarded MRC grant to continue research investigating the effects of radiotherapy on the invasive capacity of brain tumour cells
Glioblastoma is an incurable primary brain tumour with a tendency to infiltrate the healthy brain. Recent research has indicated that, while radiotherapy extends life expectancy, it increases the invasive behaviour of glioblastoma cells and might exacerbate the severe neurological symptoms that are caused by brain infiltration.
Using mouse models in which human glioblastoma cells grow as tumours within the mouse brain, a team of Glasgow researchers has found that a cellular signalling protein called MRCK is responsible for the pro-invasive effects of radiotherapy. Working in collaboration with Professor Mike Olson of the CRUK Beatson Institute, Professor Anthony Chalmers and Dr Joanna Birch (Institute of Cancer Sciences) have also shown that a novel drug developed by the CRUK Beatson Drug Discovery Unit completely blocks this unwanted effect.
Based on this work, Profs. Chalmers and Olson have now been awarded a prestigious 3-year grant from the Medial Research Grant that will enable them to determine the mechanisms underlying these effects, with a view to combining MRCK inhibitors with radiotherapy in patients with glioblastoma. In support of this ambition, the Drug Discovery Unit is in the process of patenting the novel MRCK inhibitor, and future work will involve additional collaborators both within the CRUK Beatson Institute (Dr. Heather McKinnon, Dr. Leo Carlin, Dr Sara Zannivan) and internationally (Prof. Frank Winkler, DFKZ, Heidelberg).
Dr Stephan Dreyer, Clinical Research Fellow, Glasgow Precision Oncology Laboratory
Winner of the Hirshberg Award for best abstract in pancreatic cancer at the 48th Annual Meeting of the American Pancreatic Association in San Diego on 9th November 2017
Tenovus Pilot grant — “Insights into the behavior of anti-metastatic gamma delta T cells”
Royal Society Research Grant — “Understanding the anti-tumor functions of gamma delta T cells in metastatic breast cancer”
Towards the end of last year, Dr Lisa Hopcroft started work on the research programme funded by two fellowships from Leuka (2 year John Goldman fellowship for future science) and the Kay Kendall Leukaemia Fund (4 year Intermediate fellowship); the latter comes with a wet lab RA for in vitro validation of in silico findings. The research will apply and develop computational methodologies to interpret single cell RNA-seq expression data to characterise the leukaemic bone marrow niche, elucidating pro-leukaemic singling pathways that might represent novel drug targets. She will be presenting her plans and progress thus far at an ICS seminar on the 16th February.
First published: 31 October 2017