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Cardiff CLL Research Group
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Our newest PI – Dr EJ Walsby…
Big congratulations to Beth! She has won her first grant as a principal investigator. The grant is from Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research UK. The title is “In vitro modeling of the effects of BTK and PI3K inhibitors on circulating CLL cells”. Well done, Beth and good luck.
Congratulations Professor Pepper
It’s a great pleasure to congratulate Professor Pepper on the award of his person chair.
If you want to learn more about Chris’ background, you can check out this talk he gave the ‘Science in Health LIVE’ event at Cardiff University School of Medicine.
Here it is:
Congratulations Suliman
Suliman after his viva.
Suliman successfully defended his thesis today. It was a long viva – over four hours. Suliman looks very happy to have it completed. Suliman has spent three years studying the proteome of CLL cells and has generated lots of interesting data. He was supervised by Dr Paul Brennan, Dr Chris Pepper and Dr Ian Brewis. In preperation, Suliman had three mock vivas – one from each supervisor.
A few corrections to be done and then it’s home to Saudi Arabia. Congratulations and well done, Dr Alsagaby 🙂
More publicity for the Cardiff CLL group
The Cardiff CLL group is featured in the latest issue of the Cardiff University School of Medicine newsletter (Remedy, page 4). Click on the image and you will see a good general summary of the group’s research and a nice picture of the happy (ish) workers.
Promising clinical results for new drug for CLL
Professor Chris Fegan featured in the media, after the announcement of promising results from a clinical trial of obinutuzumab (GA101) conducted in Cardiff.
Click on the picture to watch the video interview with Chris (this can also be found at http://www.itv.com/news/wales/topic/cardiff/)
More details on the story can be found below:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/400000/Drug-hope-for-leukaemia-sufferers
INSPIREd student – Zain Amir
Yesterday, we hosted Zain Amir as part of the INSPIRE programme. Zain helped in the lab and heard about research from Liam Morgan, Beth Walsaby and Ceri Jones. I asked him to write about his experiences and this is what he wrote:
“Being a medical student, you are asked from the onset of your interview for Med School to justify: why you want to be a doctor – and why not a teacher, nurse or even researcher? We all take the same stance – we want to be in a career that’s more active, more in touch with helping people. My INSPIRE taster session with the CLL Research Group at Cardiff University would strongly challenge this statement.
I started my day at the Cancer Genetics Building, having done some pre-reading / pre-googling of certain aspects of CLL research and I felt comfortable with what I understood about the condition. However, I quickly became amazed with the almost frenzy of angles that were being taken by the researchers and staff to find out more about CLL.
From transcription factors to cell surface proteins to the genetic configuration of the disease to creating model lymph nodes, I was being introduced to different ideas that I hadn’t even thought could be possible for research. Not only that, research techniques such as flow cytometery – which in a Medical Student’s mind after a few SSC essays turns into one of those words which you know you’ve read in paper but don’t really know what it means – makes so much more sense when you actually see one in real life.
This multidisciplinary focus on CLL Research was inspiring especially to see so many different approaches in action, all aiming to solve the same problem. This made me draw comparisons with how each speciality of the healthcare profession work together to treat the whole patient. By talking to a Clinical Academic Fellow, research doesn’t seem as far from “being a doctor” as we think. In fact, one quote by Clinical Fellow Ceri Jones which I feel is relevant to any medic, including myself, thinking about going into research is that “as medics we can often have a different and relevant view at research because we will bring our patients and what the disease means to them, along with us into the Research Lab”
As doctors and future doctors, we are given the privilege of our profession but the true credit goes to the days spent in the lab and the immense amount of number crunching that goes on by people to give us the techniques and medicine that we learn and use daily. Maybe it time for us to earn our privilege.
Overall this was an exhilarating day – to come and see the variety of ideas flowing around the place. The people I’ve met were more than welcoming and eager to share their time with me.
So Thank You – I’ve learnt tonnes!!
Zain Amir
2nd Year Bristol Medical Student“
Congratulations Ryan!
Last Friday after 3 years of hard work, Ryan Wong successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Breaking T cell Tolerance in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia”. HIs project funded by Cancer Research Wales, and supervised by Steve Man and Chris Pepper (both declined to be pictured for this article) has been very successful, and has already produced one publication with another manuscript currently under review. According to the examiners, Ryan had produced a lot of interesting results and was well prepared for his viva.
So well done, and congratulations from everyone in the Cardiff CLL group.
ps This is going to a busy year for the PhD students in the group, three more are expected to submit their PhD theses this year. So that’s one down and three to go.
7th Annual Normal and Malignant Lymphocyte Meeting
Wednesday 30th January 2013
Henry Wellcome Building (UG16)
Heath Park, Cardiff
Programme
2.30 – 2.55 Dr Beth Walsby
“Migration from circulating CLL – not going with the flow?”
2.55 – 3.20 Rosária Alexandre
“Therapeutical targeting of NF-kB in CLL with cell penetrating peptides”
3.20 – 3.45 Sophie Betteridge
“Characterising CD31-CD38 signalling in CLL”
3.45 – 4.10 Tea break
4.10 – 4.50 Dr Linda Wooldridge
“The triggers and targets of T-cell leukemic expansions”
4.50 – 5.40 Professor Graham Packham, University of Southampton
“B-cell receptor signalling in lymphoid malignancies”
CPD Approved
Sponsored by an unrestricted educational grant from Napp Pharmaceuticals
Happy New Year….
I can’t believe that it’s 2013 already. There haven’t been many updates on this blog over the last few months so I thought I would add something.
The site has been going for over a year now and we’ve had over 2,800 hits. This corresponds to about 200 a month. I am pretty happy with that 🙂
On the work side, congratulations go to Ryan Wong who submitted his PhD thesis yesterday. Well done, Ryan.
Of the fun side, last year I grew a moustache to support Movember. CLL affects men a lot more than women plus it was fun. Liam wanted me to post up the picture from the end of the month so here goes:
cardiffcll 