This month saw a delegation of our technical and scientific support staff travel to Glasgow to meet our MRC National Mouse Genetics Network colleagues at the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute at the University of Glasgow and then on to the University of Dundee.
On Monday 6th of June Michelle Stewart, Mark Gardiner, Ilaria Cervellini, Jackie Harrison and Mary Lyon Centre Director Sara Wells headed to Glasgow to meet the Network’s Cancer Cluster members that work there. They were treated to comprehensive tours of the labs and animal facility and overwhelmed by the warm welcome and the amount of information shared with them.
They then split to focus more on their areas of expertise with Mark concentrating on operational details, whilst Michelle, Jackie and Ilaria were more involved in animal facility discussions with their manager, the breeding staff and the surgical team who demonstrated some of the colonoscopy surgical techniques applied in the study of colorectal cancer at the institute.
The MRC National Mouse Genetics Network Director Owen Sansom’s laboratory Principal Scientific Officer Rachel Ridgway and Karen Blyth, who co-leads the Cancer Cluster, proceeded to give extremely useful presentations on the mouse models they use for their studies and background information on colorectal cancer and their planned network research.
A Q&A session after was a definite highlight with many ideas put forward for the future of this exciting collaboration.
Owen and Sara went on to the School of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee to discuss the protein modulation PROTAC System with Alessio Ciulli, Dario Alessi and Miratul Muqit and explore how the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit and the Network can work together.
An extremely productive trip to kick off an incredibly exciting project!
