Welcome to the March 2020 SCS Newsletter
We hope everyone is well and keeping safe. There are regular University of Glasgow updates for staff and students here: CORONAVIRUS: INFORMATION FOR STAFF AND STUDENTS
@UofGCancerSci @ICS_AthenaSWAN
Institute News
Institute News
World Cancer Day took place on 4th February 2020. We celebrated with a display of lab group posters in the WWCR cafe.
And at POG...
...World Cancer Day (4th February) and Women in Science Day (11th February)
For World Cancer Day and Women in Science Day, the work of two of our amazing researchers, Professor Mhairi Copland and Dr Alison Michie was highlighted in a *Bloodwise campaign (*now known as Blood Cancer UK)
UofG’s Future World Changers: "I am Kudzai Nyamondo and I am in the second year of my PhD at the Paul O’Gorman Leukaemia Research Centre under Dr. Helen Wheadon’s supervision. I was recently selected as one of University of Glasgow’s Future World Changers for 2019/2020".
"My ambition is to transform the quality of healthcare in developing countries. Whilst advances in medicine have created several solutions currently used in the developed world, there is an evident gap in addressing similar issues in low income countries. My hope is to acquire the skills necessary to address the existing healthcare problems. This has taken shape through my working with GOVIRAL, which is a social enterprise founded by UofG alumna Jiska van der Reest and Ryan Gersava. GOVIRAL aims to reduce the prevalence of hepatitis B within the Philippines by increasing awareness, advocacy and access to treatment. Working with GOVIRAL has given me the opportunity to apply some of the scientific skills I’m developing through my PhD, whilst seeing first-hand how a social enterprise can map out effective solutions to address healthcare concerns and navigate existing political and economic issues. In the long run, my hope is to continue identifying sustainable solutions to healthcare issues whilst identifying ways to equip individuals within those communities with necessary skills to make a living".
Fundraising Events
Team McGuigan – Final Farewell! Congratulations and a huge thank you from everyone at POG to John & Maureen McGuigan who have reached an amazing fundraising total of £90,323 after their final charity night in October. Team McGuigan first began raising money in 2003 by taking part in a sponsored cycle, which became an annual family fixture for more than a decade. The fantastic fundraising family raised nearly £6000 at their recent charity night – which had extra special emotional attachment as this year marked their “final farewell” to the annual event.
Conferences and Meetings
Some of the guys from the lab attended the American Society of Haematology Annual Meeting in Orlando in December 2019. Caroline Busch, Wittawat Chantkran (KK) and Laura Monaghan all presented their work as posters and Professor Mhairi Copland had an oral presentation of the MATCHPOINT clinical trial. Caroline and Laura both received travel awards from the Tessa Holyoake Endowment Travel Fund for this trip.
Dr Alison Michie has been invited to give a presentation at the UK-CLL Forum in London, in March. The title of her presentation is “OutFOXing CLL: exploiting the regulation of FOXO transcription factors in CLL”.
Professor Mhairi Copland has been invited to give a seminar at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Hematology and Oncology at the University of Vienna about her group’s work on leukaemia stem cells.
Prof Rob Insall swapped his lab coat for legislation on a visit to the Houses of Parliament and Whitehall for a week in Westminster 1st – 5th March. This was part of a unique pairing scheme run by the Royal Society (the UK’s national academy of science) with support from the Government Office of Science.
The Royal Society's pairing scheme (started in 2001) aims to build bridges between parliamentarians, civil servants and some of thebest scientist sin the UK.
Rob shadowed Gregory Dyke in BEIS.
Rob: "I learned more about how science changes policy in two days, than in 15 years working with research councils. It was completely exhausting, but reassuring about the quality of advice that’s available if our politicians want to take it"
Staff News and Awards
Staff News and Awards
MVLS Service Excellence Awards Cingratulations to Stacey Hoare, Freddie Nisbet and Diane Verrecchia on their recent MVLS excellent services awards.
CR-UK Programme Foundation Award - Dr Gudmundur Vignir Helgason - Title: “Targeting Autophagy and Aberrant Metabolism of Leukaemic Stem Cells”. Currently, leukaemic stem cells in chronic myeloid leukaemia are resistant to therapy. Our previous work has highlighted two cellular processes, autophagy and mitochondrial metabolism, as critical for the survival of chronic myeloid leukaemia stem cells. The main aims of the CR-UK Programme Foundation Award is to further investigate how we can inhibit these processes and test novel drug that we have identified through drug screening or obtained through collaboration with industry. Award: £1.35M https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/funding-for-researchers/our-funding-schemes/programme-foundation-awards
Academy of Medical Sciences - Dr Kristina Kirschner was awarded a Springboard award from the Academy of Medical Sciences – “Elucidating the role of Notch signalling in secondary senescence”
Professor Tessa Holyoake Endowment Fund - Dr. Ya-Ching Hsieh (Dr Kristina Kirschner’s group) was awarded the Professor Tessa Holyoake Endowment Fund Small Research Grant for her project “Single cell transcriptome and protein BM niche profiling with CITE-seq in CML disease progression”.
Cure Leukaemia Trials Acceleration Programme – Professor Mhairi Copland has successfully led the haemato-oncology clinical trials team at the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre in a bid to secure funding for a research nurse for 3 years to help fast-track early phase clinical trials in blood cancers. Award: £150,000
Joan Snodgrass Bequest - Through the generosity of the late Joan Snodgrass and her family, the Paul O’Gorman Leukaemia Research Centre are pleased to announce the development of the Joan Snodgrass Bequest PhD studentship. This studentship will provide a promising science graduate the opportunity to carry out a programme of leukaemia research within our state-of-the-art facilities. This year the PhD studentship was awarded to Dr Alison Michie’s laboratory whose main research focus is chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL). This studentship will address the role of the transcription factor family FOXO, investigating whether individual FOXO family members differentially regulate CLL cell survival, proliferation and sensitivity to drugs. We look forward to welcoming the new student to our Centre in October 2020.
Joan Snodgrass Bequest - The Joan Snodgrass Bequest also generated funds to support a small project, which we are delighted to announce was awarded to Dr. Jodie Hay to investigate the regulation of the CLL tumour microenvironment upon modulation of FOXO1 activity.
Seth Coffelt In December Seth was awarded 2 grants from Breast Cancer Now. A PhD studentship and a Project Grant where Leo Carlin are co-leads.
A warm welcome to all of our new staff.
Dr Anand Manoharan joins us as a Research Associate in March. He will be working with Professor Mhairi Copland and Dr Karen Keeshan. Anand will be work on a 12-month project with our industrial collaborator Cyclacel further exploring the cell cycle and apoptosis in AML.
Yi-Hsia LIU, I am originally from Taiwan and I was awarded a PhD in Edinburgh in 2012. In 2014, I moved to Aberdeen where I started my first PostDoc in Uveitis research. I moved to Glasgow last September and started my Flow Technician job in February. I am looking forward to my new life in western Scotland and I hope I will enjoy it.
Raffaella Casolino, visiting research from University of Verona, working in GPOL and PrecisionPanc. This week Rafaella and Antonio Pea returned to Italy to help with COVID-19. We wish them the very best and look forward to seeing them again soon.
Katharine Herbert, Research Associate joined the WWCRC working with David Chang.
Sofia Polcowñuk joined the WWCRC from Argentina, where she worked in Behaviour with Drosophila Melanogaster. Sofia is now a PostDoc in Julia Cordero’s lab.
David Stewart recently joined Paul Grimwood’s Informatics team, GPOL.
Anargyros Megalios started on 2nd March as a Systems Administrator within the Informatics Team at GPOL.
Athena SWAN News
ICS Athena SWAN News
Garscube Campus LGBTQIA+ coffee hour took place on 23rd January at 10.30am WWCRC Cafe. If you didn’t manage to join us this time David Bryant and Ed Roberts are looking for suggestions for future events.
International Women’s Day
Our International Women’s Day Special Seminar was held on Thursday 5th March at 12.00 in the BICR Lecture Theatre
“The Demise of the Rockstar PI? Team Science and Changing Research Culture in the 2020s”
We were joined by Professor Josephine Bunch (NPL Fellow in Biomolecular Analysis and leader of the CRUK Grand Challenge Rosetta team) and Dr Diego Benedict Baptista (Diversity and Inclusion Adviser on Research Culture, Wellcome Trust). We explored the changing research culture and how this intersects with equality and diversity. One of the key points was exploring how it might be possible to introduce more inclusive hallmarks of performance whilst still promoting academic excellence and cutting edge science, and how the team science agenda has impacted on this both positively and negatively. The speakers and topic were introduced by Dr Chris Halsey. There was pleanty of opportunity for audience participation with a panel discussion at the end.
There was also a photo gallery of Inspiration Women in Science.
Our Athena SWAN Silver Award trophy is on display on the shelf behind reception in WWCRC so please do have a good look when you are passing by. We will try and rotate it to POG sometime over the coming months as well.
PhDStudents and Postdoc Forum
PhD Student News
PhD Student News- VIVAs
Congratulations to the following students who completed their VIVA’s recently:
Jake Ritchie (Nov 19), Karim Aldosari (Nov 19), Angela Ianicello (Nov 19), Giusy Caligiuri (Dec 19), Emily Kay (Dec 19), Yasmin El Maghloob (Dec 19), Helgee Magnussen (Jan 20), Ricky Cunningham (Jan 20), Matthew Massett (Jan 20), Meera Patel (Feb 20)
Matt Massett has successfully defended his PhD viva on 17th January 2020, Supervisors – Dr Xu Huang, Professor David Vetrie and Dr Alison Michie. For his viva, Heather is convener, Helen is internal examiner and Prof. Katrin Ottersbach (University of Edinburgh) and Dr. Alice Giustacchini (UCL) are two external examiners.
Congratulations to Amy Dawson from Dr Vignir Helgason’s lab for handing in her doctoral thesis and then successfully passed via Zoom – very well done Amy
Congratulations also to Ricky Cunningham from Andrew Biankin's lab for submitting his thesis and then passing his VIVA "Subtype Specific Metabolic Vulnerabilities in Pancreatic Cancer"
Postdoc Forum Update
Finishing 2019 with our annual Pub Quiz and a Career in Industry talk, the PostDoc Forum started into 2020 with a lively discussion on open access publishing with CRUK’s Diana Alexander.
We were also excited to welcome Emma Woodlands, a Beatson Alumna, sharing with us her experience working at the Glasgow Science Centre where she creates relevant, engaging and accessible STEM engagement for all.
For the more socially-minded we organized a Board Game Night in February, while motivational speaker Hugh Kearns helps us with “Time, Balance and Staying Well in Research” on 24/02/20 (especially necessary during the dark Glaswegian winter) and we are getting advice on Fellowship applications from Catherine Winchester on 06/03/20.
The PostDoc Forum runs biweekly on Fridays from 16.15 – 17.15 (with Pizza and Drinks) and takes place in the Beatson Lecture Theatre. We are looking forward to welcoming you all to our events (also non-PostDocs).
If you are interested in a more active role within PostDoc Forum, don’t be shy, please come and talk to us as we are always happy to welcome new committee members!
Keep an eye out for our next events which we always promote on the What’s On. We are especially looking forward to our Spring Social (let’s see if we can top last year’s Murder Mystery Scavenger Hunt!) and the joint PostDoc Conference (6th SBPRC) held this year in Edinburgh. Email: postdoc-society@beatson.gla.ac.uk
Publications
Publications
Sepp K, Lee M, Bluntzer MTJ, Helgason GV, Hulme AN, Brunton VG. 2019 Dec
Defining niche interactions to target chronic myeloid leukemia stem cells.
Mitchell R, Copland M. Haematologica. 2020 Jan
Walker DA, Meijer L, Coyle B, Halsey C. Lancet Child Adolesc Health. 2020 Jan
O'Toole PW, Shiels PG. J Intern Med. 2020 Jan
Horne GA, Stobo J, Kelly C, Mukhopadhyay A, Latif AL, Dixon-Hughes J, McMahon L, Cony-Makhoul P, Byrne J, Smith G, Koschmieder S, BrÜmmendorf TH, Schafhausen P, Gallipoli P, Thomson F, Cong W, Clark RE, Milojkovic D, Helgason GV, Foroni L, Nicolini FE, Holyoake TL, Copland M.
The leukaemia stem cell: similarities, differences and clinical prospects in CML and AML.
Vetrie D, Helgason GV, Copland M. Nat Rev Cancer. 2020 Jan 6.
Kinstrie R, Horne GA, Morrison H, Irvine D, Munje C, Castañeda EG, Moka HA, Dunn K, Cassels JE, Parry N, Clarke CJ, Scott MT, Clark RE, Holyoake TL, Wheadon H, Copland M. Leukemia. 2020 Jan 2
Nrf2 in early vascular ageing: calcification, senescence and therapy. Arefin S, Buchanan S, Hobson S, Steinmetz J, Alsalhi S, Shiels PG, Kublickiene K, Stenvinkel Clin Chim Acta. 2020 Feb
BCR signaling contributes to autophagy regulation in chronic lymphocytic leukemia. 2020 Feb
Smith LD, Minton AR, Blunt MD, Karydis LI, Dutton DA, Rogers-Broadway KR, Dobson R, Liu R, Norster F, Hogg E, Ashton-Key M, Strefford JC, Jia L, Efremov DG, Helgason GV, Johnson PWM, Stevenson FK, Forconi F, Cragg MS, Tumbarello DA, Packham G, Steele AJ.
The NF-KB pathway and endocrine therapy resistance in breast cancer
Khongthong P, Roseweir AK, Edwards J. Endocr Relat Cancer. 2019 March
Daniel J Murphy et al Cancer Discovery March 2020
ICS Social Committee
Events update
Thank you to those of you who completed the Social Committee questionnaire in December. We received a lot of positive feedback and some good suggestions for future events, which will be taken forward.
Our Bake sale on 3rd March was a huge success, thank you to all who contributed towards the baking and the sales!! £122 was raised and has been sent to the Australian Bush Fire charity.
Our upcoming events are currently on hold. We look forward to seeing everyone again soon.
If you would like to join the Social Committee or have suggestions on how we could improve on our events, then please email: cancersci-ins-social@glasgow.ac.uk
Useful Information
Flow Cytometry Services within ICS
At the Paul O Gorman Leukaemia Research Centre (POG) we have significant experience using flow cytometry and have two instruments in the department, a BD FACSCanto II and a BD FACSAria III. The Canto is an analyser and has three lasers with the capabilities to detect up to 10 parameters and the Aria is a cell sorter which can detect up to 17 parameters.
Jen Cassels is our resident flow cytometry specialist and is on hand to help and advise with all aspects of flow cytometry, from panel and experimental design to running experiments and analysing data. Whilst we utilise flow cytometry to achieve our own research goals we are dedicated to the advancement of scientific research within ICS, the University of Glasgow and beyond. Therefore, if you think we can assist your research please contact us and hopefully we can be of some help jennifer.cassels@glasgow.ac.uk
Open Access
The Open Access team supports compliance reports for Research Excellence Framework (REF) Open Access requirements. The reports are provided by administrators through the University's QlikView reporting tool.
REF Open Access compliance guidance, including details on REF exceptions, is available here
For more information contact: research-openaccess@glasgow.ac.uk