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WestFocus Life Science Network Newsletter 3
July 2008
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Brunel takes Bioprocessing Workshop on the Road
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Brunel University’s Institute for Bioengineering is taking its very successful Bioprocessing Workshop on the road. The half day mobile workshop brings its unique services to you, giving your organisation the chance to assess this new technology on-site. Bioprocessing technologies such as Counter Current Chromatography (CCC) are key to successfully developing the next generation of bioscience and chemical products. This technology can add-value to many processes in the pharmaceutical, environmental, petroleum and chemical industries.
BIB has more than a decades experience in developing the technology of liquid-liquid chromatography, a technique for the purification or extraction of components from a mixture. BIB’s Bioprocessing Workshops are also available providing more in-depth knowledge and the chance to test the technology on your own sample.
All kind of samples can be separated by CCC: including: natural products, synthetic molecules, crude mixtures, and fine chemicals. It can also be used to purify biomolecules like proteins, peptides and plasmids. Our researchers are looking at purifying bioparticles such as viruses. The technique has a number of distinct advantages, such as no filters, no columns to replace, no drifting of peak retention times, and 100% recovery of all components; an overall more economic, efficient process. Interested in finding out how CCC can help you? Let the experts bring the solution to you! If you would like further information about upcoming Roadshows, Workshops and how to bring the workshop to your company, please contact: Dr Ian Garrard. Ian.garrard@brunel.ac.uk , Tel:+44 (0) 1895 266908 or visit our website:www.lifesciences.org.uk
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Elite Sport Medicine Experts Visit St George’s (SGUL)
Students and staff from SGUL and other WestFocus institutions were given the once in a lifetime experience to gain valuable career advice from working with elite sport medicine professionals. The SGUL Centre for Enterprise & Innovation Team coordinated the event working alongside Dr Linda Fitzgerald (SGUL) and Gary Lewin, Chief Physiotherapist, England Football. The event was used to inform students of potential career opportunities as well as capturing student’s interest in new and exciting initiatives.
Prof Sean Hilton (SGUL) opened the event by welcoming the expert panel which included: Gary Lewin, Chief Physiotherapist to England Football, Michael Turner medic to the Lawn Tennis Association, Michele Gemignani, medic to Juventus Football, John Davies international rugby medic, and Liz Mendl from the Scottish Institute of Sport. The panel discussed their wealth of experience of managing the healthcare needs of top athletes in a highly competitive environment.
The event consisted of very lively ‘Question & Answer’ sessions, where student directly presented their own burning questions to the panel. The group was given further opportunities to chat with the panel at the lunch, exhibition and networking session. The event has led to students moving forward with a new Sport Medicine Society to gain valuable hands on experience and to improve community health initiatives.
The Centre for Enterprise & Innovation Team would like to thank all those involved for their support and enthusiasm.
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Networking Well with WestFocus: |
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The recent WestFocus ‘Better Networks for Better Health Event’ was an excellent day of networking and partnership building, bringing together experts from several disciplines, institutions and networks. The many challenges of translating research into effective patient care were discussed through the presentations and workshops. Healthcare practitioners and managers were given the opportunity to discuss the real research needs of their patients directly with academics. Better communication between academic, healthcare and industry professionals was highlighted to reduce the translation gap and a call for further themed partnering meetings requested. Wim Troch from Pharmalicensing Ltd, stated, “A brilliant event that allowed us to talk to lots of new people”.
Sponsored by: Curacyte Ltd, GATC Biotech Ltd, Healthcare & Wellbeing Solutions Ltd, IDTDNA Ltd, Neovite Ltd, NHS Innovations, PEQLab Ltd, Pharmalicensing Ltd, Pret A Manger, Qiagen Ltd
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Royal Holloway Working on Future Antibiotics |
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Scientists at Royal Holloway, University of London have joined forces with CABI to establish a facility to screen for potential new antibiotics. Royal Holloway and CABI both bring a combination of individual scientific skills, expertise and resources to the project. When brought together, these offer the opportunity to build a highly focused natural products drug discovery operation that will address the urgent need for bringing new antibiotic compounds to market.
Dr Trevor Nicholls, CEO CABI added, “This is a really exciting partnership and we are looking forward to working with the expertise of the scientists at Royal Holloway. We are hopeful that our collaboration will prove the winning formula for discovering new drugs to fight cancers, diseases and resistant strains of infections such as MRSA.” Royal Holloway has also obtained early stage seed fund investment from the London Development Agency backed WestFocus PARK Fund, to commercialise any potential new discoveries emerging from this project. The project team will work closely with the Research & Enterprise department at Royal Holloway to protect, manage and exploit any new intellectual property. More information on this and other projects http://www.rhul.ac.uk
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Young Scientists Get a Taste of Real Science |
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Each year Pamela Greenwell at the University of Westminster gives young scientists the opportunity to find out how scientists really work. This valuable experience was organised through The Enfield Work Experience. Over a two week period school pupils are given their own short research project to do and head back to school with a poster outlining their achievements whilst on placement. “For most students this is a very enjoyable experience and enables them to understand what a career in science may have to offer”, said Pamela. Within the space of 2 weeks the students managed to purify DNA from 2 organisms, amplify a total a of 6 gene sin each organism, run gels and analyse the results. You’ll be pleased to note they both would like a science related career and they have already booked another week at the end of July to sequence their products.
What the students had to say!
Thushyanth Selavanayakam, Year 10 student, Highlands School, Enfield. I’m a student in year 10 who came to the University of Westminster for a 2 weeks work experience program. These were the tasks which were given to me during time I have been working in the laboratory:
- Growing organisms
- Isolating DNA
- Making Diamonds medium
- To learn how to make 1% of agarose gel
- Making a poster to show our progress to others
- Assisting the MSc and PhD students with their work
By looking at this, you will be thinking that working in a lab is as boring as doing some practical work in your science lessons. That is totally wrong! For some people this might be not new as their school have these facilities to do this kind of exciting experiments but for the others who don’t have these facilities, this will be worth doing. You mostly learn in the lab. This also helped me think about my future in doing something which is related to microbiology and that’s why I am now pleased about myself that I had the opportunity to work with a great supervisor and will later share my progress I have made during these two weeks with my teachers and friends at school.
Oshéa Paris Johnson, Year 10 student, Highlands School, Enfield. I was a year 10 student on a two week work experience placement at the University of Westminster. When on my placement I worked under the expert eye of Dr. Pamela Greenwell in the Microbiology lab. During my placement I carried out a number of scientific practical’s and tasks including:
- Making Media
- Growing organisms (protozoans)
- Isolating/Amplifying and Extracting DNA of Trichomonas vaginalis (TV) and Trichomonas foetus (TF) cells
- Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)
- Bradford Protein Determination
- Estimation of protein concentration in Urine and Saliva
- Staining TV cells
- Making a poster
I also generally helped around the lab and assisting MSc and PhD students. I really enjoyed my two weeks at the University of Westminster. This experience has given me an insight into the world of Microbiology and I hope it will assist me in pursuing a career in Forensic Science.
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Other WestFocus work
Corporate and Public Health Initiative (CPHI)
Researchers at Thames Valley University (TVU) have shown that many employers do not adequately
manage their occupational health and human resources. TVU, WestFocus and Slough Business and
Community Partnership (SBCP) have come together to create a new model of public health initiative in
the workplace where employers and individuals collaborate together. The works has had considerable
achievements during 2007-8 thanks to a Lottery Community Fund Grant of £10, 000. Want to know more
about this exciting partnership?
Visit http://www.westfocus.org.uk/Health/p18_Corporate_and_Public_Health_Initiative.aspx
Heritage2Health Day a Great Success
A recent Heritage2Health event held at Marble Hill House and Ham House, was a tremendous success.
Participants aged from two to ninety-two enjoyed a fantastic day of activities. One student volunteer
said “H2H helps us to learn to gain consent from people and to truly work with a multi-disciplinary team, and work with people in a natural environment”.
Heritage2Health is a partnership between St George’s, University of London, Kingston University, WestFocus Health network, English Heritage and The National Trust. The activity days, now in their third year, offer a unique opportunity for students of health and social care sciences at the Joint Faculty to work in partnership with and experience hands on the needs and abilities of disabled members of the local community.
Events
28th Jul – 1st Aug 08. Traditional Chinese Medicine week, Royal Society of Medicine.
25th - 26th Sept 08. Microcirculation Abnormalities in Vascular Disease: Scientific Principles and Clinical Significance. Held at St George's Hospital, London. A meeting for physicians, scientists and surgeons presented by the Cardiovascular Research Group. Chaired by Prof Juan Carlos Kaski. RCP CME Credits. For more details on the programme and how to register see http://www.cardiovascular-research.co.uk/ or contact crg@sgul.ac.uk
14th - 19th June 2009. International Conference of Biopartitioning and Purification (BPP), Brunel University.
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