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By Dr. Lisa Dwane, Postdoctoral Researcher, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland The first link between estrogen and breast cancer was made in the late 1800s, when physician George Beatson, who correctly suspected a link between the endocrine system and breast cell proliferation, removed the ovaries of a 33-year old woman with advanced breast cancer and controlled the growth of her tumours (Clarke, 1998). The young mother astonishingly lived for four years following this surgery; an unheard miracle in an era that offered toxic chemotherapy and debilitating surgical procedures as the only options for advanced cancer. Over a century later our …

By Rachel Bleach, PhD Student, RCSI By the age of 79 years, 1 in 14 women will develop breast cancer (Global Burden of Disease Cancer 2017). Beatson reported on the utility of removing the ovaries in the treatment of advanced breast cancer in 1896, leading to the observation that estrogen is one of the driving factors in breast cancer. This discovery revolutionised the field for breast cancer treatments and since then, there has been a firm focus on estrogen ablation as a therapy (Love and Philips 2002). Initially therapies such as selective estrogen receptor modulators/degraders were developed to target the estrogen receptor (ER) protein. More rece …

The immune system is the body’s main defence against infection. In order to function properly, the immune system must be able to detect and protect against infinite agents such as pathogens including viruses and bacteria and unhealthy or infected cells. In order to do this, various cells are required to carry out specific functions. In the article below, an overview of neutrophils will be discussed including their function and development. What is a Neutrophil? Neutrophils are the most abundant white blood cell in the circulation are regarded as the first line of defence of the innate immune system. They are characte …

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE “GREEN” EVOLUTION OF OXYGEN AND CARBON DIOXIDE WITHIN OUR ATMOSPHERE Million years ago carbon dioxide (CO2) levels used to be considerably higher compared to the measured levels today (Allègre and Schneider, 1994) (see Figure 1). Notably, the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii repeatedly measured unprecedented inclines of CO2 levels over the last years with recent peaks of more than 400 ppm (i.e., atmospheric concentrations of 0.04%) (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2019). window.SHOGUN_IMAGE_ELEMENTS = window.SHOGUN_IMAGE_ELEMENTS || new Array(); window.SHOGUN_I …

Dr. Melissa Conroy, TTMI I am an immunologist and senior research fellow in the Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Group, Department of Surgery at Trinity College Dublin. My research is focused on developing novel immunotherapies in the space of obesity, cancer and liver disease with a specific focus on lymphocyte trafficking and chemokine networks. My research examines how we can target the underlying immune processes in pathological inflammation in obesity, cancer and liver disease. My PhD was focused on immune responses to chronic hepatitis virus infection and identified novel functions of natural killer cells and innate T cells in viral hepa …

By Eoin Mac Réamoinn Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are renowned for their fundamental roles in innate sensing and initiating inflammatory responses. TLRs accomplish this remarkable task through interactions with conserved molecular structures known as pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), such as lipopolysaccharides, that are expressed by microbial species. Once ligated, TLRs propagate stimuli via one of two intracellular signalling cascades culminating in the induced expression of pro-inflammatory genes needed for pathogen clearance and tissue remodelling. The Architecture of a Toll-like receptor …

Katherine Edwards, PhD Student, Queen’s University Belfast Cytokines play a vital role in immune responses enabling cross-talk between different cell types and inducing activation, differentiation, proliferation and cell migration by altering gene expression in target cell types. There are a wide variety of cytokines each with varying roles which when produced in different combinations can lead to various outcomes. Cytokines can promote inflammation and aid migration of effector immune cells to sites of infection or damage where these cells then work as a team to combat the problem. Cytokines can also be anti-inflammatory – these cytokines are relea …

Traumatic injuries & death When I ask people what the leading cause of death is in the United States in people age 44 and under, they generally reply saying cancer. It wouldn’t be illogical to think that this is the answer, but it would be incorrect. In fact, unintentional traumatic injuries are responsible for more deaths in these age groups than any other cause such as homicide, cancer or heart disease. Accidental traumatic injury can be categorized into several groups such as blunt-force trauma, hemorrhage, crush injuries, bone fractures, radiation injury and any of these in combination. These types of injuries happen in traumatic scenarios like …

Laura Menke PhD candidate, Queen Mary University of London Inflammation vs. Resolution Atherothrombosis is the leading cause of death worldwide and can be linked to the formation of blood clots in the vascular system. Depending on the location of clot formation, atherothrombosis can stimulate a variety of disease pathologies such as stroke, heart infarct and even leg ischemia, which makes research regarding prevention and treatment of this disease so important. Epidemiological studies indicate that in our society with increased age and enhanced obesity and diabetes prevalence, the risk of vascular diseases will further increase and reac …

By Sonika Singh PhD candidate, University of Nottingham A Devastating Disease Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic and inflammatory disease based on autoimmunity[1], mainly affecting the central nervous system (CNS) in young white adults[2]. MS is a disease which involves damage to the myelin sheath, that is a lipoprotein-based insulation of the axons. This sheath is essential for the electrical activity and saltatory conduction of nerve impulses and is an important part of the nervous system [2]. Areas of inflammation, axonal loss, demyelination and gliosis, occurring throughout the brain and spinal cord are the distinctive features o …

Interferons (IFNs) are a group of signalling proteins that are produced and released from cells in response to viral infection and other stimuli such as normal and tumour cell survival and death. IFNs interact with specific cellular receptors, thereby promoting production of secondary messengers which leads to the expression of antiviral and immune modulatory genes. There are three groups of IFNs, Type I IFNs, Type II IFNs and Type III IFNs. Type I IFNs include IFN-alpha, -beta, -omega, -kappa and IFN-zeta. These are essential for regulating the immune response to viral infections. The Type II IFN group only includes IFN-gamma. IFN-gamma is a versatile cytokine that plays an essen …

LATS kinases belong to a family of proteins that, in mammals, are comprised of two isoforms, LATS1 and LATS2. Originally identified in Drosophila melanogaster as Warts kinase, LATS1 and LATS2 serine/threonine kinases have been shown to be tumour suppressors (Edwards and Munger 2004). The original homologue of LATS was described as the dlats/warts tumour suppressor in two independent screens in Drosophila (Justice et al. 1995, Xu et al. 1995). Dlats and warts encoded the same gene so in this thesis the original homologue of LATS is warts (wts). Homozygous loss of the warts gene in Drosophila formed greatly overgrown somatic cells which lead to the hypothesis that warts is a tumour suppr …

How to increase lab productivityWhen you look back at some weeks in the lab it seems like you have achieved nothing and your lab productivity can be low. Your cloning hasn’t worked or your mice just won’t mate. Or sometimes you are just allergic to working in the lab, and before you know it another year has gone by, your funding is running out and you are wondering where you are going to find to the time to finish those critical papers that will make your grant application. Here are 10 simple steps to increase lab productivity.Start working early:Although I am not expert and was terrible at working in the lab, I would mostly start work at 10, take coffee at 10 30 and decide to really s …

MST2/Hippo PathwayMammalian Sterile Twenty (MST) pathways have been identified as a homologue of the ste20 kinase from Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Creasy and Chernoff 1995). The MST2/Hippo pathway has been identified as a master regulator of cell proliferation, cell death and cell differentiation (Yu and Guan 2013).The Hippo Pathway in drosophilaIn Drosophila, the Hippo pathway was first discovered with the identification of Fat and expanded proteins which were shown to regulate cell proliferation (Boedigheimer and Laughon 1993, Mahoney et al. 1991). The Hippo pathway in Drosophila is composed of a number of core proteins which have homologues in mammalian cells. The Hippo pathway was ma …

Cancer DevelopmentCancer is a group of diseases that involves abnormal cell growth resulting in malignant tumours/ malignant neoplasms. Cancer is a leading cause of morbidity, with 14 million new cases diagnosed and 8.2 million people dying from cancer in 2012 (World Health Organisation 2015). The different types of cancers are classified by the cell type they originate from. The most common cancers are breast, colorectum, lung, cervix, and stomach cancer. There are a number of risk factors that lead to cancer development such as smoking tobacco, an unbalanced diet, being overweight, alcohol use and lack of physical activity (World Health Organisation 2015) Cancer development results i …

A wide variety of cell surface receptors activate Ras GTPase, including the tyrosine receptor linked to the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) (Wells 1999). Upon receptor stimulation, son of sevenless (SOS) stimulates Ras to change from GDP to GTP resulting in Ras activation (Geyer and Wittinghofer 1997).Ras GTPaseRas GTPase shuttles between inactive GDP-bound and active GTP-bound conformation (Colicelli 2004). The best characterised isoforms of Ras GTPase are K-Ras, H-Ras and N-Ras, which are demonstrated to be mutated in 30% of human tumours (Repasky et al. 2004). Activated Ras phosphorylates and activates the Ser/Thr kinase Raf. The three isoforms of Raf are B-Raf, Raf-1 and A- …

Unregulated cell growthCancer, although heterogeneous by its very nature, can be broadly defined as a set of diseases characterised by unregulated cell growth leading to invasion of surrounding tissues and spread (metastasis) to other parts of the body (King et al., 2006). Inhibiting cell division therefore represents a key therapeutic target for cancer.Characteristics of cancer cellsIn their seminal review, Hanahan and Weinberg identified 6 key characteristics of cancer cells, namely: autostimulation; angiogenesis; metastasis; insensitivity to antiproliferative signals; resistance to apoptosis; and limitless replicative potential (Hanahan et al., 2000). This list was recently expande …

Delighted to be featured on Sophie Arthur’s blog, Soph Talks Science, where she interviews PhDs about their lives as researchers. Some great pieces on the site that are linkedin with the Instagram profiles of the researchers, you can find the interview here:Scientist in the Spotlight. Sean M. window.SHOGUN_IMAGE_ELEMENTS = window.SHOGUN_IMAGE_ELEMENTS || new Array(); window.SHOGUN_IMAGE_ELEMENTS.push({ hoverImage: '', uuid: 's-206680cc-50fa-4256-b642-544a4df23a30' }) { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "title": "Scientist in the spotlight", "description": "Explore the life of Sean Mac Fhearraigh as he shares his experien …

IntroductionThe human kinome is estimated to contain 518 genes, in comparison to the estimated 180 genes that comprise the phosphatome (Arena et al., 2005). These kinase genes represent a significant fraction of all eukaryotic genes, highlighting the prominent role of these enzymes in controlling key cellular functions (Manning et al., 2002). The first oncogene to be identified and characterised, Src, was found to be a tyrosine kinase (Collett et al., 1980; Czernilofsky et al., 1980). The isolation of this tyrosine kinase in 1980 came 7 years before the first tyrosine phosphatase, PTP1B, which was identified in 1987 and purified in 1988 (Lim Tung et al., 1987; Tonks et al., 1988). Inve …

At ELISA Genie we are hugely interested in the future of science and we feel that PhD students are at the heart of this. Our new series, #LabChats, will see us interview different scientists and PhD students to find out about what drew them to science, what motivates them, and what they like to do outside of the lab. Our first episode saw us sit down with Laura Menke, a PhD fellow in the Blizzard Institute, Queen Mary University London. We loved hearing about what drew her to specialize in Cardiovascular Pharmacology, her experiences moving around Europe and the US, and her thoughts on women in STEM.  We can see that Laura is an extremely passionate scientist and we kno …

Throughout my graduate and postgraduate studies I have been really intrigued and fascinated by the mitochondria, the organelle that keeps all of us running everyday! The more I learn about them, the more intricate they get. Historical Perspective on Mitochondria Function Traditionally, mitochondria were known to be a static organelle that is involved in energy production, earning the nickname “powerhouse of the cell”. But, in recent years we have learned that mitochondria are extremely dynamic organelles and can change their shape and structure by undergoing fusion and fission events to cope with metabolic demands. Mitochondrial respi …

IQGAP1: IQ-motif containing GTPase-activating-like protein-1 reviewIQ motif-containing GTPase-activating-like protein-1 (IQGAP1) is a 190 KDa protein that belongs to a conserved family of scaffolds and was first identified in 1994 (Weissbach et al. 1994). The IQGAP family are comprised of three isoforms IQGAP1, IQGAP2 and IQGAP3 in mammals.IQGAP expressionIQGAP homologs are found in a variety of organisms and the mammalian IQGAPs share 20% amino acid identity with Iqg1p in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Abel et al. 2015). In humans, IQGAP1 is expressed ubiquitously in tissues while IQGAP2 is expressed mainly in the liver and IQGAP3 is identified in the brain, lung, testis and colon (Whi …

By Catríona Dowling, Post-Doc, RCSI I want you to come on a journey with me where we are going to the botanic gardens. You will pick a section of the garden that is yours: yours to treasure and nourish. If a weed started to grow in that garden, would you chose to ignore the weed or would you try to remove it? And if you did leave it there, would you expect it to grow and spread or just stay as it is? I am no Diarmuid Gavin but what I am is a cancer researcher and I am here to try and explain the benefits of cancer prevention and early diagnosis. Did you know that 50% of all cancers are preventable with 30% preventable by lifestyle changes alone? Cancer is like the weed in our bod …

By Natalia Siomava, PhD Cretinism is a severe medical condition of intellectual disability caused by the deficiency of thyroid hormone (congenital hypothyroidism). Severe thyroid deficiency or maternal hypothyroidism has been reported in numerous countries all over the world. It is common in areas with iodine-deficient soils (Kapil, 2007). However, each year a greater number of infants was born with congenital hypothyroidism in countries such as North America, Europe, Australia and Japan (Harris and Pass, 2007; Hinton et al., 2010).In these children, growth regulation and metabolism are misbalanced and the development is delayed early on. This resul …