Dr Ting-Yu Lin and Dr Francesco Boselli of our Department of Biosciences have each been granted a Springboard Award to help support their research in biomedical sciences.
Awarded by the Academy of Medical Sciences in partnership with the Government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Wellcome, and the British Heart Foundation, the Springboard Award supports early career biomedical scientists across the UK as they pursue projects that address critical health problems.
Dr Ting-Yu Lin has been awarded £125,000 to pursue research to help fight cancers and neurodegenerative diseases, while Dr Francesco Boselli has been awarded £116,000 to study lung infections and aid the development of new therapies. They will also receive mentoring and career development support.
Ting-Yu's research will centre on RNA multiplication, which is often viewed as a messenger, transcribing and translating DNA to create proteins in the cell. While much of biomedicine's focus has been on DNA, Ting-Yu will look at this process, specifically how modifications to RNA correlate to how proteins fold.
Ting-Yu focuses on one enzyme, called Psueoduridine synthase 7, that modifies RNA. When there are errors in this modification, it can impact how proteins are produced, potentially leading to disorders or cancers. For one, the enzyme can be overexpressed in brain cancer.
Along with Dr David Doupé of the Department of Biosciences, Ting-Yu will investigate the enzyme using fruit flies to determine how it operates and how we can develop therapies to fight certain cancers and neurodegenerative diseases.
Francesco will study motile cilia, such as those that line parts of our lungs and nose. Thousands of these hair-like structures, which are 100 times shorter than a millimetre, move (sometimes 30 times per second!) to pump out pollutants, viruses, and bacteria from our lungs.
Then why do we still get lung diseases and infections? To answer this question, Francesco will use a high-speed camera and microscope to observe cilia movement in slow motion to see exactly how particles move through them, or in some cases, get trapped between them.
Francesco hopes that this work will help us learn more about lung infections and develop new therapies based on effective deliveries of nanomedicines.
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