Biography

Sarah did her PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK and was a Beit Memorial Fellow at University College London. She started her group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 2001. In 2013, she moved to the Wellcome Genome Campus where her group was joint between the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and in 2016 was appointed Head of the Cellular Genetics programme at the Sanger. In 2024, Sarah will take up a Chair in Stem Cell Medicine at the University of Cambridge (Cambridge Stem Cell Institute & Dept Medicine).

Sarah’s laboratory develops and applies cell atlas technologies to decipher human tissue architecture, with a particular focus on how cellular diversity is generated in the immune system and through development. Sarah is co-founder and co-leader of the international Human Cell Atlas consortium which aims to create reference maps for cells across all human tissues and has grown to include over three thousand members across the world. She also co-directs the CIFAR MacMillan Multiscale Human research programme. Her work has been recognised by numerous awards, including the EMBO Gold Medal, Genetics Society Mary Lyons Award, Biochemical Society GlaxoSmithKline Award, the FEBS|EMBO Women in Science Award among others. She is an EMBO Member, ISCB Fellow, and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Royal Society.

Biography

Following his PhD in biochemistry from the Biozentrum of the University of Basel and postdoctoral work at Yale University School of Medicine Volker Haucke established his own laboratory at the University of Göttingen. He was appointed as a full professor of biochemistry at the Freie Universiät Berlin in 2003. Since 2012 he is director at the Leibniz Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP), professor of molecular pharmacology at Freie Universität Berlin and a member of the NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence.

The focus of research in his laboratory is the dissection of the molecular mechanisms of endocytosis and endolysosomal membrane dynamics with a focus on the role of signaling lipids. The laboratory uses a wide range of technologies that include biochemical and cell biological approaches, electrophysiology, chemical biology, super-resolution and electron microscopy as well as genetic manipulations at the organismic level in vivo. His discoveries have provided insight into the roles of lipids in cell physiology and open new avenues for the treatment of human diseases ranging from cancer and thrombosis to neurological disorders. He was a Feldberg Prizewinner for 2020 who gave his lecture at University College London in September 2022.

Biography

Martin Beck studied Biochemistry at the Martin Luther University Halle/Wittenberg. He did his PhD studies with Wolfgang Baumeister at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried. In 2006 he moved to Ruedi Aebersold’s laboratory at the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology at ETH Zurich for his postdoctoral training. Martin Beck was a research group leader at EMBL Heidelberg from 2010-2020. Since 2019 he is a director at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt.

In eukaryotes, the genetic information is concealed into the nucleus that shields it from the cellular surroundings. Martin Beck’s research focuses on nucleocytoplasmic transport, i.e., how molecules are transported in and out of the nucleus. His laboratory has pioneered integrative, in situ structural biology techniques to study the structure, function, assembly and turnover of nuclear pore complexes in their native environment. They elucidated the scaffold architecture of the human nuclear pore, visualized nuclear pore dilation and constriction movements inside of cells and discovered a maternal biogenesis pathway that inherits nuclear pores to the early embryo. Martin Beck is a member of EMBO. His work has been awarded the starting, consolidator and advanced grants of the European Research Council.

Biography

Professor Doreen Cantrell is an immunologist in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee. Her work has focused on T cells, key cells of the adaptive immune response. She skilfully integrates biochemistry, molecular genetics, and cell biology to understand the molecular processes that control T lymphocyte function. Her laboratory has made fundamental contributions to defining how signal transduction pathways controlled by antigen receptors and cytokines control T cell metabolism, T cell trafficking, T cell growth, proliferation and differentiation. This work provides the framework of basic knowledge about T cell signal transduction required to probe the molecular mechanisms that underpin productive versus non-productive activation of peripheral T cells.  Doreen studied Zoology at The University College of Wales in Aberystwyth and then did a PhD in Cellular Immunology at the University of Nottingham.  Her postdoctoral training was at Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire with Kendall Smith and at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories (ICRF) with Michael Crumpton. Between 1987-2002 she led an Immunology research group at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute. She then moved as a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow to the University of Dundee in 2002.   Doreen was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2000), member of EMBO (2000), Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2005) and Fellow of the Royal Society (2011). She was appointed CBE in 2014 for services to Life Sciences.

Biography

Jan Born is the director of the Department of Medical Psychology and Behavioral
Neurobiology at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He obtained PhDs in
Psychology and Physiology. After stays at the State University of New York at Stony
Brook and the Department of Physiology at the University of Ulm, Germany, he was
appointed full professor of Physiological Psychology at the University of Bamberg in
1989. In 1999, he joined the Department of Neuroendocrinology at the University of
Lübeck, and changed in 2010 to his current position. Born’s primary research
interests are in the dynamics of memory formation in biological systems. He is
particularly interested in the memory functions that sleep serves for the central
nervous system and the immune system. For his research he has received several
awards and honors including the Leibniz award of the German Science Foundation in 2010. Dr. Born has co-authored more than 500 publications. He is a fellow of the MaxPlanck School of Cognition and a member of the German National Academy of
Sciences, Leopoldina.

Contact address: Institute für Medizinische Psychologie und Verhaltensneurobiologie
Universität Tübingen

Biography

Vassilis Pachnis is a senior group leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London. He studied Medicine at the University of Athens, Greece, and obtained a PhD in Molecular Genetics from the University of Pennsylvania, under the supervision of Prof. Shirley Tilghman. Following postdoctoral work at Columbia University in the laboratories of Dr Richard Axel and Dr Frank Costantini, he established his independent research group at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research (London) in 1991. Since 2016, his group is part of the Crick Institute. Vassilis’ research has focused on the development and homeostasis of the peripheral nervous system. In particular, his group has contributed to our understanding of the genetic and molecular mechanisms that govern the assembly and function of the intrinsic neural networks of the intestine, collectively called the enteric nervous system. In parallel his team also studies how enteric neurons and glial cells interact with microbiota and the immune system to regulate intestinal homeostasis and the response of gut tissues to infectious challenge. Vassilis has been elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2000), member of EMBO (2007) and Fellow of the Royal Society (2018).

Biography

Anne Ephrussi received her Bachelor’s degree from Harvard University with honors in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and her PhD in Biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), for her work on immunoglobulin gene regulation, which she carried out in the laboratory of Susumu Tonegawa. She conducted postdoctoral research with Tom Maniatis at Harvard and with Ruth Lehmann at the Whitehead Institute/MIT, where she studied localized RNA determinants of cell fate and showed that oskar induces germline formation in Drosophila. Since 1992, Anne has been a Group Leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. Her research is mostly focused on mechanisms of RNA post-transcriptional regulation, in particular RNA localization and translational control in the context of embryonic patterning and germline development. Anne became Senior Scientist in 1998 and Head of the Developmental Biology Unit in 2007. Committed to the training of young scientists, Anne has been involved graduate training since the early 1990s. After serving as Dean of Graduate Studies and Head of the EMBL International Centre for Advanced Training (EICAT), in 2019 Anne was appointed Director of EICAT. She is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO), of the Academia Europaea, and of the French Academy of Sciences.

Biography

Maria Fitzgerald studies the developmental physiology and neurobiology of pain circuits in the brain and spinal cord. Her work has had a major impact on our understanding of how pain perception emerges in early life and how early pain experience can shape pain sensitivity for life. Maria studied Physiological Sciences at Oxford and trained in pain physiology and neuroscience with Patrick Wall FRS at UCL, who taught her to love science and to never be afraid of asking questions. She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2000 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2016, as a world leader in the science of pain, whose work has had a major impact on the treatment of pain in infants. Her research has shown that while basic nociception is functional at birth, the systems in the brain that determine pain perception develop later and are vulnerable to stress and trauma in early life. Her research has changed clinical perception by showing that pain in infancy requires appropriate measurement and treatment which should be tailored to the developmental stage of the child. Maria is currently Professor of Developmental Neurobiology at University College London.

Biography

Ralf Adams received his PhD with distinction in 1996 from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt for his studies on axon guidance molecules, which were done under the supervision of Heinrich Betz at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research. After a successful period of postdoctoral research in the group of Rüdiger Klein at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, he moved to London in 2000 and established his independent laboratory at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute. In 2007, he became director at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine and full professor at the University of Münster, Germany. The main research interests of Ralf Adams are vascular biology, the regulation of blood vessel growth, the organ-specific specialization of vascular cells, and the crosstalk between the vasculature and other cell types in the surrounding tissue. A key discovery by his team is the identification specialized vessel subpopulations in bone with critical functional roles in skeletal development, bone homeostasis, age-related bone loss, and osteoporosis. His research uses advanced mouse genetics and confocal/two-photon microscopy together with a range of cell biology approaches. Ralf Adams is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation since 2014. He has received the Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society, the Werner Risau Memorial Award, and the Malpighi Award of the European Society for Microcirculation.

Biography

My laboratory focuses on the molecular processes underlying receptor-ion channel-coupling, particularly in heart and smooth muscle cells. Current studies seek to understand the role of specific transient receptor potential (TRP) channels in cellular excitation as well as the functions of β-subunits (CaVβ) of voltage-gated calcium channels which are independent of CaVα1, the ion conducting pore of these channels. Techniques used to study these processes include gene targeting, identification of novel genes through genomics screens, patch clamp measurements of ion channel function, Ca imaging, and protein biochemistry.

A major goal of the laboratory is to identify genes encoding channel proteins and relating signalling molecules involved in muscle biology and to determine their functions in health and disease. An additional effort in the laboratory is to combine genetics, protein chemistry and pharmacological procedures to advance the understanding of physiological processes.

Biography

During the past decade our research has mainly been focused on the molecular basis of the biosynthesis of iron-sulfur (Fe/S) proteins in eukaryotes. These proteins carry an inorganic Fe/S cofactor which may be used for electron transfer, enzyme catalysis or sensing. It appears that Fe/S protein biogenesis is ancient process with pivotal importance for life. The pathway is tightly linked to several other biochemical processes such as cellular iron regulation, tRNA modification, and nuclear DNA maintenance. Impairment of Fe/S protein biogenesis or of individual Fe/S proteins leads to several neurodegenerative or haematological diseases.

In our work we have identified many of the known factors of Fe/S protein biogenesis, and we have contributed to the understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms by combining in vivo and in vitro biochemical and cell biological approaches (see Reviews). We found that mitochondria play a crucial role in this pathway being involved in the maturation of all cellular Fe/S proteins, thus becoming indispensable for a living eukaryotic cell. Biogenesis is accomplished by three complex proteinaceous machineries. Mitochondrial Fe/S proteins require the iron-sulfur cluster (ISC) assembly machinery which was inherited by endosymbiosis of bacteria during evolution. Cytosolic and nuclear Fe/S proteins are assembled with the help of the cytosolic iron-sulfur protein assembly (CIA) machinery. This process additionally involves the function of the mitochondrial ISC assembly machinery which contributes an unknown compound exported to the cytosol by the mitochondrial ISC export apparatus. During the past years we have defined some basic principles of biosynthesis. Sulfur is provided by a mitochondrial cysteine desulfurase, and reduced to sulfide by a ferredoxin-dependent electron transfer chain. Fe/S cluster assembly is a two stage reaction. Fe/S clusters are first synthesised on mitochondrial or cytosolic scaffold proteins before they are transferred to and incorporated into apoproteins. The components of all three systems (more than 25 proteins) are highly conserved from yeast to man suggesting similar mechanisms of Fe/S protein assembly. The indispensable function of the ISC assembly machinery within mitochondria is impressively exemplified by the presence of ISC components within mitosomes present in Microsporidia or Giardia, i.e. highly reduced organelles which during evolution have lost all classical functions of mitochondria.

We also have contributed to the tight connection of Fe/S protein biogenesis to cellular iron homeostasis. The efficiency of mitochondrial Fe/S protein assembly serves as a critical sensor for cellular iron homeostasis, both in yeast and mammalian cells, yet via radically different mechanisms. While in yeast mitochondrial Fe/S protein defects lead to the transcriptional activation of the iron regulon (via the transcription factor Aft1 and glutaredoxins), impaired Fe/S protein maturation in mammals causes a post-transcriptional defect in the assembly of the cytosolic Fe/S protein IRP1 (iron regulatory protein 1) which is crucial for the regulation of iron uptake into the cell. Fe/S protein biosynthesis is of medical importance in that more than ten diseases are associated with ISC, CIA or Fe/S protein defects. For instance, depletion of the ISC assembly component frataxin leads to the neurodegenerative disease Friedreich’s ataxia, and a defect in the ISC export protein ABCB7 is associated with X-linked sideroblastic anemia and ataxia (XLSA/A). Fe/S protein defects in the nucleus impairing DNA replication and/or DNA repair link Fe/S protein biogenesis to numerous diseases including various forms of cancer.

Our current work is focussed on the molecular and structural understanding of Fe/S protein assembly. We try to identify and characterise further biogenesis components, and unravel the mechanisms underlying Fe/S protein biosynthesis in mitochondria, the cytosol and nucleus. In particular, we are interested in the contribution of mitochondria to cytosolic/nuclear Fe/S protein biogenesis. We also aim to better understand the molecular basis of the intimate link between Fe/S protein biogenesis and iron homeostasis.

Biography

Over the last ten years, Patrick Cramer has given many internationally recognized contributions to the understanding of the mechanism of eukaryotic gene transcription using an integrated structural biology approach. The regulation of gene transcription underlies cell growth and differentiation, and its deregulation causes diseases such as cancers and metabolic diseases. As the director of the Gene Center at the University of Munich, he initiated numerous interdisciplinary approaches as well as many successful collaborations in academia and industry, and strongly contributed to the education and training of the next generation of life scientists. The work of Patrick Cramer was recognized with many prizes, awards, and honours. These include the Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz Award of the German Research Council (DFG), the highest research award in Germany.

Biography

Prof. Iain Mattaj was born in St. Andrews, Scotland. He attended Edinburgh University. After completing his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry (honours) he attended the University of Leeds, England for his PhD studies. Following his PhD, Prof. Mattaj carried out postdoctoral research at the Friedrich Miescher Institute, Switzerland then at the Biocentre, University of Basel, Switzerland before joining EMBL Heidelberg, Germany as a Group Leader in 1985. He became Coordinator of the Gene Expression Unit at EMBL in 1990 before being promoted to the position of Scientific Director in 1999. Prof. Mattaj was appointed Director-General in May 2005.

Prof. Mattaj is a distinguished scientist whose contributions have been recognised by his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society (London), Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Member of Academia Europea and Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Science. He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) and helped make The EMBO Journal a highly successful international scientific journal, acting as Executive Editor from 1990 to 2004.

Biography

My laboratory studies the role of ion channels in normal physiology and disease. We are seeking to achieve a comprehensive view on these proteins on the molecular, cellular and organismic level. An important goal of our work is to explore the potential of ion channels for therapeutic interference as well as their impact as drug target.

One particular class of ion channels we are interested in are cyclic nucleotide-modulated (CNG and HCN) channels. CNG channels are crucial for visual transduction. Dysfunction of CNG channels is associated with several forms of blindness. We have developed advanced viral gene therapy approaches to restore vision in CNG channel-deficient mouse lines. Our long-term goal is to translate these methods into therapies for human patients. HCN channels play a fundamental role in the control of the heart beat but are also relevant for normal brain function. HCN channel dysfunction gives rise to important diseases, including cardiac arrhythmia, epilepsy and neuropathic pain. We have developed a number of mouse models to dissect the particular roles of HCN channels in these diseases. As for CNG channels we are seeking to identify therapeutic applications for HCN channels. Recently, our laboratory characterized a novel class of cation channels, the two-pore channels (TPCs). TPCs are Ca2+ permeable channels that are localized in endo/lysosomal organelles. We have launched a multidisplinary program to elucidate the significance of TPCs in normal physiology and disease.

Biography

Nikolaus Pfanner studied Medicine at the University of Munich, Germany. He received his training in biochemistry and molecular cell biology in the laboratories of Walter Neupert (University of Munich) and James E. Rothman (Princeton University, New Jersey). Since 1992 he has been Professor of Biochemistry and Chair of the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Freiburg, Germany. From 2009 – 2011 he was President of the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (GBM).

Nikolaus Pfanner studies protein sorting in cells and focuses on the biogenesis and assembly of mitochondria. His research team performed the first comprehensive analysis of the proteome of an entire cell organelle (mitochondria), leading to the discovery of more than 200 new mitochondrial proteins. He identified novel pathways and machineries for the import of proteins into mitochondria and their assembly into oligomeric complexes. His recent studies showed that protein translocases do not act as independent units but are integrated into a network of machineries that function in bioenergetics, membrane morphology, signalling and protein quality control, revealing a higher level of organisation of cell organelles. The work of Nikolaus Pfanner was recognized with numerous awards and honours. These include the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Award of the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Max Planck Research Award for International Cooperation and the Research Award of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO), the German Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europaea.

Biography

Roger S. Goody studied Chemistry at the University of Birmingham, England, where he got his PhD in 1968. He then accepted a post-doctoral position at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, NY, USA in the field of natural products research. In 1970 he became a scientific fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine, Göttingen in the field of nucleotide research.

From 1972 till 1993 he was a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Heidelberg in the field of enzymology and nucleotide research, with a focus on actin, myosin, adenylate kinase, EF-Tu, HRAS-p21, reverse transcriptase, nucleotides and nucleic acid sequencing. An overriding theme of his research interests has been the transient states of enzymes, along the enzyme reaction pathway, against the background of selective and specific ligand-protein interactions and structure-function relationships. In 1983 he habilitated at the faculty for biochemistry and biophysics of the University of Heidelberg and was announced adjunct professor in 1990. In 1993 he accepted the position of Director at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology, Dortmund and became a scientific fellow of the Max Planck Society. Since 2004 Roger Goody has also held a full professorship in biochemistry (supramolecular systems) at the Ruhr University Bochum, with a dual emphasis on higher education and fundamental research. Since 2013, Roger Goody is President of the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (GBM). He is married and has two children.

Biography

Prof. Dr Thomas Langer received his PhD in 1993 from the University of Munich after working at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, in the group of F.U. Hartl on mechanisms of chaperone-mediated protein folding. As a postdoctoral researcher he joined the group of W. Neupert at the Department of Physiological Chemistry of the Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich and was appointed in 2000 as a full professor at the Institute for Genetics of the University of Cologne. His research interests are mechanisms of mitochondrial quality control and lipid trafficking and their role in neurodegenerative disorders.

A dysfunction of mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell, has severe cellular consequences and is linked to aging and neurodegeneration. We are interested in cellular surveillance strategies that have evolved to limit mitochondrial damage and ensure cellular integrity. Protein quality control, executed by various intramitochondrial proteases, and the dynamic fusion and fission of mitochondrial membranes are emerging as key processes in the molecular network governing aging and life-span. Impairment of these systems is associated with various neurodegenerative disorders that form the focus of our research. Studies on AAA proteases, energy-dependent quality control enzymes in the inner membrane of mitochondria, and associated prohibitin scaffold complexes have unraveled important regulatory functions for biogenesis and fusion of mitochondrial membranes and highlight the importance of inner membrane integrity for mitochondrial activities and neuronal survival. The stress-induced processing of the dynamin-like GTPase OPA1 by the novel peptidase OMA1 has been identified as a potential sensing mechanism for mitochondrial dysfunction, offering novel approaches for genetic and biochemical interventions.

Biography

Asifa Akhtar obtained her bachelors degree in biology at University College London (UCL), UK, in 1993 and her Ph.D. in 1998 at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London, studying transcription regulation in Richard Treisman’s laboratory. She continued in the field of chromatin regulation as a postdoctoral fellow at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg, Germany, and the Adolf Butenandt Institute, Munich, Germany, in Peter Becker’s laboratory until 2001. From 2001, she led her own research as a group leader at the EMBL. In 2009, her laboratory moved to the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, Freiburg, Germany. She is currently managing director at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics and is heading the department of chromatin regulation. Her laboratory primarily studies chromatin and epigenetic mechanisms, especially focusing on the regulation of the X chromosome by the phenomenon of dosage compensation in Drosophila melanogaster. In 2008, she received the European Life Science Organization (ELSO) award for significant contribution in the field and in 2013 she was elected as an EMBO member.

Biography

Rohini Kuner is a Full Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology and the Director of the Institute for Pharmacology, Medical Faculty Heidelberg, Heidelberg University, Germany. She was trained in pharmacology, neuroscience and mouse genetics at the University of Iowa City, USA, the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Heidelberg and Heidelberg University. She is the Spokesperson and Leading Scientist of the Heidelberg Pain Consortium (Collaborative Research Center 1158 funded by the German Research Foundation). It spans research activities from over 40 research groups and numerous disciplines in the basic sciences as well as clinical centres addressing neural circuits mediating pain and their reorganisation and plasticity in chronic pain states. Rohini Kuner’s research interests span neurobiological mechanisms underlying chronic pain disorders, elucidation of neural circuits mediating pain and other neurological disorders, cell-cell interactions in the nervous system and development of new strategies for pharmacological therapies. She is particularly known for her work on the molecular neurobiology of pain and has received several national and international scientific awards for uncovering key molecules mediating pain of inflammatory, neuropathic or cancer origin.

Biography

Professor Dame Kay Davies, Ph.D., DBE FMedSci FRS is the Dr Lee’s Professor of Anatomy Emeritus and co-Director of the MDUK Oxford Neuromuscular Centre in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford.  She received a BA degree in Chemistry and a graduate PhD degree in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford.  She was appointed Professor of Genetics in 1996 and then appointed Dr Lee’s Professor of Anatomy at the University of Oxford in 1998.  She was founding Director of the MRC Functional Genomics Unit 1999-2017 and co-founded the Oxford Centre of Gene Function in 2000 with Professors Ashcroft and Donnelly, a new institute going from genetic association in human disease to function in the whole organism. Kay’s research interests lie in the molecular analysis and development of treatments for genetic diseases, particularly Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).  She has published more than 400 papers and won numerous awards for her work and co-founded companies to translate her work to the clinic.  Kay is a founding Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society. She was appointed Governor of the Wellcome Trust in 2008 and became Deputy Chair 2013-17.   Until recently she chaired the Genome England Clinical Interpretation Partnership in the UK and is a member of the GRL Board at the Sanger Institute.  She was made Dame Commander of the British Empire for services to science in 2008.

Biography

Peter Somogyi has pioneered the spatial and temporal dissection of synaptic circuits in the brain, and in particular the cerebral cortex. He has discovered and named several cortical neurons, such as the axo-axonic cell and the hippocampal bistratified cell, and established their synaptic connections, molecular structure and physiological action. He explored the molecular constituents and temporal dynamics of cortical neurons in the context of their function in the network. His vision that explanations of normal and pathological events in the brain can only come from the rigorous definition of the neuronal circuits that underlie these events has led to the discovery of novel principles of neuronal organisation in the basal ganglia the cerebellum the neocortex and the hippocampus. Somogyi has pioneered novel approaches to the study of the central nervous system and developed innovative methods adopted by others internationally, and have contributed to the wider development of neuroscience as a discipline. For example, he has pioneered quantitative receptor localisation in cells of the brain with a 20 nm accuracy using high-resolution electron microscopic immunolabelling, and discovered the compartmentalised subsynaptic location of different classes of neurotransmitter receptors.

He and his colleagues achieved the recording of the timing of action potentials in vivo of neurons defined in synaptic and molecular terms as specific links in neuronal assemblies. In his recent work with Thomas Klausberger, they discovered an unsuspected temporal division of labour amongst GABAergic hippocampal neurons by recording them in several brain states in vivo and through unequivocal molecular and microscopic identification. In general, Somogyi’s work has demonstrated how a co-operative division of labour in time and space between distinct types of neuron underlies the processing power of the cortex.

Somogyi has demonstrated how molecules, synapses and cells serve the precise delivery of action in time. He has consistently pursued a systems approach to explanations of the brain. His exploration of complex neuronal networks has bridged the molecular, synaptic and network levels of organisation, translating his vision to explicit definition of how and where information processing takes place. He has summed up his work, as defining the chronocircuitry of the cerebral cortex. In addition to his personal scientific contribution, Somogyi has also trained outstanding scientists now working worldwide. Some of his pupils have become world leaders in their own right. The Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit under his directorship continues to play a pathfinder role in pioneering the explanation of neuronal circuits of the brain.

Biography

Frances Ashcroft’s research aims to understand how glucose regulates insulin secretion from the pancreatic islets of Langerhans and how this process is impaired in disease. Around 25 years ago she discovered that the ATP-sensitive potassium (KATP) channel serves as the molecular link between glucose metabolism and insulin secretion from pancreatic beta-cells. Closing of this channel in response to metabolically generated ATP (or antidiabetic sulphonylurea drugs) stimulates insulin secretion.

Ashcroft’s more recent collaborative studies have shown that mutations in the genes that encode KATP channel subunits cause neonatal diabetes by impairing the ability of ATP to close the channel. In most cases, however, sulphonylurea inhibition is not affected, enabling patients to switch from insulin injections to drug therapy. Her current studies continue to focus on the KATP channel, and range from attempts to define its atomic structure to understanding the molecular basis of the neurological complications found in some human patients with KATP channel mutations.

Biography

Eleanor Maguire undertook her PhD at University College Dublin where she first became interested in the neural basis of memory while working with patients as a neuropsychologist. She is currently a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow and Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London, where she is also the Deputy Head. In addition, she is an honorary member of the Department of Neuropsychology, National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London.

Eleanor heads the Memory and Space research laboratory at the Centre, where her team uses whole brain and high resolution structural and functional MRI in conjunction with neuropsychological examination of patients in order to understand how memories are formed, represented and recollected by the human brain. She has won a number of prizes, including the Ig Nobel Prize for Medicine – awarded for research promoting the public awareness and understanding of science; the Cognitive Neuroscience Society Young Investigator Award – in recognition of outstanding contributions to cognitive neuroscience early in one’s career; two Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowships; and the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award – made for outstanding contributions to science.

Biography

Steve Gamblin uses a combination of structural, biophysical and functional studies to understand molecules involved in diseases such as influenza, diabetes and cancer. Work on influenza is focused on the two major surface glycoproteins of the virus, hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). This work has addressed the mechanistic basis of the receptor specificity of HA – an important issue in the transmission of viruses from birds and swine to humans and thus the occurrence of a pandemic. Work on NA has described the mechanism for influenza viruses acquiring resistance to anti-viral drugs like Tamiflu.

Work relevant to diabetes has focused on understanding the structural and mechanistic basis of energy sensing and regulation by the human AMP-dependent Protein Kinase (AMPK). This enzyme is the target for the most commonly used drugs to treat type 2 diabetes and understanding its structure/mechanism is aiding novel drug design.

Gamblin’s laboratory has a long-term interest in how covalent modifications of histones, the molecules that package DNA into chromatin, regulate gene expression through epigenetic mechansims. Work in this area has established the structural/functional basis of histone methylation by SET domains and shown novel mechanisms for the regulation of this activity in the context of the Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2). These studies have provided important insights into the propagation of repressive chromatin domains, and it is hoped they will lead to the identification of small molecule inhibitors that may be of use in certain cancers.

Biography

The laboratory is interested in synaptic mechanisms and, in particular, synaptic plasticity in the mammalian central nervous system. Synaptic plasticity is the process by which synapses alter their efficiency and this property is used by the nervous system to store information. Synaptic plasticity is therefore a fundamental property of the brain involved in the development of the nervous system, learning & memory and other cognitive processes. Dysfunction of synaptic plastic processes is believed to be involved in various psychiatric and neurological disorders, including epilepsy and ischaemic brain injury. By elucidating the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity at a molecular level we can begin to understand how we are able to learn and remember, and how these processes are altered in conditions such as Alzheimer’s Disease, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, chronic stress, anxiety, depression and epilepsy.

We are particularly interested in the phenomena of long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD), which are forms of synaptic plasticity exhibited by many different classes of synapse in the brain. Most of our work focuses on synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus, a brain area important for learning and memory. Within the hippocampus we work on two main synapses, the Schaffer collateral / commissural projection from CA3 to CA1 neurons and the mossy fibre projection from dentate granule cells to CA3 neurons. The main focus of the work we do is to investigate the underlying mechanisms of different forms of LTP and LTD at these synapses using a combination of electrophysiological and imaging techniques.

Biography

Russell Foster is Professor of Circadian Neuroscience and the Head of Department of Ophthalmology. He is also a Nicholas Kurti Senior Fellow at Brasenose College. Prior to this, Russell was at Imperial College where Russell was Chair of Molecular Neuroscience within the Faculty of Medicine. Russell Foster’s research spans basic and applied circadian and photoreceptor biology.

He received his education at the University of Bristol under the supervision of Professor Sir Brian Follett. from 1988–1995 he was a member of the National Science Foundation Center for Biological Rhythms at the University of Virginia and worked closely with Michael Menaker. In 1995 he returned to the UK and established his group at Imperial College. For his discovery of non-rod, non-cone ocular photoreceptors he has been awarded the Honma prize (Japan), Cogan award (USA), and Zoological Society Scientific & Edride-Green Medals (UK). He is the co-author of “Rhythms of Life” a popular science book on circadian rhythms.

His research interests span both visual and circadian neurobiology with the main focus on the mechanisms whereby light regulates vertebrate circadian rhythms.

All life on earth has evolved under a rhythmically changing cycle of light and darkness, and organisms from single-celled bacteria up to man possess an internal representation of time. These 24 hour cycles, termed circadian rhythms, persist in the absence of external cues, and provide a means of anticipating changes in the environment rather than passively responding to them. In mammals, including man, light provides the critical input to the circadian system, synchronising the body clock to prevailing conditions. The photoreceptors providing this input are found in the retina, consisting of the classical rods and cones which enable image-formation, as well as a recently identified subset of photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (pRGCs).

The research interests of his group range across the neurosciences but with specific interests in circadian, visual and behavioural neuroscience. This covers such topics as how circadian rhythms are generated, the diverse functions these rhythms serve, how this system is regulated by light, the role of classical and novel photoreceptors in both visual and circadian light perception, and genetic disorders of these systems. This work includes a range of molecular, cellular, anatomical and behavioural aspects, as well as addressing the implications for human performance, productivity and health.

Biography

Patrik Rorsman studied medicine at Uppsala University, in his native Sweden, where, in 1986, he received his PhD from the Department of Medical Cell Biology. While formally enrolled as a research student at Uppsala University, he undertook additional training in the laboratory of Bert Sakmann (Nobel Prize 1991) at the Max Planck Institute for biophysical Chemistry, Gottingen, Germany. Since 2003 he serves as Professor of Diabetic Medicine at the University of Oxford. He has published more than 200 papers dealing with the function of the pancreatic islet cells and has performed pioneering studies on the cellular and molecular regulation of pancreatic islet hormone secretion, the mechanisms that underlie the ability of the different types of islet cell (beta-cells, but also alpha-cells and delta-cells) to sense changes in the plasma glucose concentration, the role ion channels play in these processes and how they become disrupted in diabetes mellitus.

He has provided evidence that dysregulation of glucagon and somatostatin secretion contributes to islet dysfunction in T2DM and, by examining the mode of action of sulphonyureas and glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) analogues on both alpha- and beta-cells, he has also made important contributions to our understanding of diabetes therapy.

His achievements have been recognised by several bodies and he has received numerous awards including the Minkowski Prize (in 1996) and the Albert Renold Prize (2013) of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. He was elected Fellow of Royal Society (FRS) in 2014, is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Science (FMedSci) since 2010 and became a Member of Academia Europaea in 2006.

Biography

Professor Irene Tracey holds the Nuffield Chair of Anaesthetic Science and is Head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford. Irene did her undergraduate and graduate studies in Biochemistry at the University of Oxford from 1985-1993 and then held a postdoctoral position at Harvard Medical School until 1996. In 1997, Irene helped to co-found and develop the now world-leading Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB) at the University of Oxford and was its Director from 2005 until 2015. She was also Head of the Nuffield Division of Anaesthetics (NDA) and an Associate Head of the Medical Sciences School at Oxford prior to taking up her current Headship post of the overall department that comprises FMRIB, NDA, the Division of Neurology, the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology and the Centre for Prevention of Stroke and Dementia. Over the past 18 years her personal multidisciplinary research team has contributed to a better understanding of pain perception, pain relief and nociceptive processing within the injured and non-injured human central nervous system using advanced neuroimaging techniques. More recently, members of her team have been investigating the neural bases of altered states of consciousness induced by anaesthetic agents, identifying novel and highly individualised markers indicating when subjects lose perception. They have pioneered the development of novel paradigms and methods for understanding pain mechanisms in humans, including spinal cord imaging, imaging tonic neural states and pharmacological imaging to aid analgesic drug discovery. Their work has radically altered how pain is viewed and contributed to a better understanding of the importance of the brain in altering and modulating the subjective pain experience. Irene’s work is highly translational as well as in basic science. Irene has served, and continues to serve, on many national and international committees in areas spanning pain, neuroscience, academia and science in general. She is a passionate advocate for women in science and is involved in many mentorship schemes to support the development of young career researchers. In 2008 she was awarded the triennial Patrick Wall Medal from the Royal College of Anaesthetists and in 2009 was made an FRCA for her contributions to the discipline. In 2015 she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. She has recently been elected to the Council of the Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom.

Biography

Ramanujan Hegde earned his MD and PhD from UCSF in 1999, completing his thesis work in the laboratory of Vishwanath Lingappa. He then started his own laboratory at the US National Institutes of Health, rising to the position of Senior Investigator. In 2011, Hegde moved to the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where he is currently a Programme Leader. Research in the Hegde lab is focused on understanding the molecular basis of intracellular protein organization. His group has made several contributions to dissecting the pathways of protein targeting and insertion at the endoplasmic reticulum, the quality control pathways that monitor failures in protein maturation, and the cellular and organismal consequences of failed protein quality control. Hegde discovered a widely conserved pathway for the post-translational targeting and insertion of tail-anchored membrane proteins, and made several contributions to its mechanistic dissection. More recently, his group has used advances in cryo-EM to gain structural insights into the essential processes of mammalian protein translation, co-translational protein targeting, and protein translocation. In parallel with these studies on protein biosynthesis, Hegde has shown that protein targeting is prone to inefficiency, and that chronic protein mis-targeting can lead to neurodegeneration. This led his group to investigate how mis-localized proteins are recognized and degraded, leading to their discovery of new protein quality control pathways. These and other studies have contributed to a deeper understanding of the biosynthetic and quality control pathways that maintain cellular protein homeostasis. Hegde’s work has been recognized by several honours, including his election as a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and Fellow of the Royal Society.

Biography

Anne Ferguson-Smith is the Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics and Head of the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge. She obtained a BSc in Molecular Biology at the University of Glasgow then a PhD in Biology at Yale University. From 1989, she conducted postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Azim Surani, first at the Babraham Institute and then at the Wellcome/CRUK Institute of Cancer and Developmental Biology, now the Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge. She was appointed to a lectureship at the University of Cambridge in 1994 and became Professor of Developmental Genetics in 2008 in the Department of Physiology Development and Neuroscience. She took up her position in the Department of Genetics in 2013. Anne’s research has focused on the epigenetic control of genome function and on epigenetic inheritance. In particular, her work on parent-of-origin effects and the function and regulation of genomic imprinting has contributed to our understanding of mammalian epigenetic mechanisms in development and disease. Her team continues to study the regulation and consequences of genomic imprinting.

More recently, her work has focused on epigenetic inheritance in a wider context including on the role of repetitive elements in the epigenetic modulation of genome function within and across generations, and on the influence of the parental environment on the transmission of phenotypic traits to offspring. Anne serves on several national and international panels and is committed to the mentorship of career investigators, especially women. She was elected a member of EMBO in 2006, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2012 and Fellow of the Royal Society in 2017.

Biography

Jörg Vogel studied biochemistry in Germany and the UK, graduating from Humboldt University Berlin with a doctoral thesis on self-splicing introns in 1999. After postdoctoral stays in Sweden and Israel, he started his own research group at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin in 2004. In 2009, he became full professor and head of the Institute of Molecular Infection Biology at the University of Würzburg. In 2017, he became the Founding Director of the federal Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research in Würzburg. Vogel is a member of EMBO, the German National Academy of Sciences, and the European and American Academies of Microbiology. He holds an Honorary Professorship for RNA Biology at Imperial College London. His RNA work was recognized with the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in 2017.

Biography

Michael Häusser earned his PhD from Oxford University under the supervision of Julian Jack. He subsequently worked with Nobel Laureate Bert Sakmann at the Max-Planck-Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg and with Philippe Ascher at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. He established his own laboratory at UCL in 1997 and became Professor of Neuroscience in 2001, where he has been a Principal Research Fellow of the Wellcome Trust since 2011. He is also currently the Facilitator of the International Brain Laboratory, a new global collaboration which aims to understand how the brain makes decisions. Häusser is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a member of Academia Europaea. Häusser’s work focuses on trying to understand the cellular and circuit basis of neural computations in the mammalian brain. To attack this problem his group is working at the interface between cellular and systems neuroscience using a combination of experiments and theory. The aim is to understand the cellular toolkit that enables single neurons to perform specific computations, and in turn how single neurons and their patterns of connections contribute to the computations performed by neural circuits during behaviour. His group has a special focus on neuronal dendrites, which actively transform synaptic inputs into specific neuronal output patterns. The experimental tools being used by the group include two-photon microscopy, patch-clamp recordings from dendrites, recordings using Neuropixels probes, and most recently the development of ‘all-optical’ approaches for simultaneous readout and manipulation of neuronal activity by combining two-photon imaging and two-photon optogenetics. These experiments are complemented by computational models of single neurons and networks of neurons.

Biography

Volker Haucke received his PhD summa cum laude in 1997 from the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, Switzerland, for his studies on mitochondrial biogenesis in the group of Gottfried (Jeff) Schatz. Following postdoctoral work as a fellow of European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) and the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) in the group of Pietro De Camilli at Yale University School of Medicine he started his own laboratory at the University of Göttingen as a member of the EMBO Young Investigator program. He was appointed as a full professor of biochemistry at the Freie Universiät Berlin in 2003. Since 2012 Volker Haucke is director at the Leibniz Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmacologie (FMP) and professor of molecular pharmacology at the Freie Universität Berlin and a member of the NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence. Volker Haucke studies the molecular mechanisms of endocytosis and endolysosomal membrane dynamics and its role in cell signaling and neurotransmission. The overarching goal of his work is to provide a mechanistic understanding of exo-endocytosis and endolysosomal function and its regulation by proteins and lipids and to use this know-how to develop novel strategies for acute chemical and pharmacological interference. Volker Haucke’s contributions to science have been recognized by his election as a Member of Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Science (Halle) and of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science. Since 2014 he is an EMBO member. In 2017 he received the Avanti Award of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB).

Biography

Gitta obtained her PhD in Biology at the University of Mainz and then did postdoctoral studies in London and Cambridge, followed by a postdoc at the Cancer Research Institute in Heidelberg. In 1985 she became a member of the Basel Institute for Immunology where she stayed until 1991.

In 1991 Gitta became a group leader in the Division of Molecular Immunology of the Medical Research Council National Institute for Medical Research (now part of the Francis Crick Institute) and Head of Division in 2010.

Her research interests over time included immune tolerance using T cell receptor transgenic mouse models and immunological memory focusing on CD4 memory T cells, their generation and survival.

Gitta’s lab got involved in infection and inflammation research following their discovery of the differentiation factors for Th17 generation. More recently they discovered the importance of the transcription factor aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR), an environmental sensor, in the immune system and beyond.

Gitta obtained an ERC Advanced Investigator grant in 2009 to study physiological functions of AHR and in 2013 was awarded a Wellcome Senior Investigator Grant to expand the investigation of AHR in innate and adaptive immune cells. She obtained a CRUK grant in 2015 to study the role of AHR in intestinal tumorigenesis and a Wellcome Investigator Grant in 2018 to focus on AHR influences in the intestinal environment.

She became a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2005, an EMBO fellow in 2008 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2013.

Biography

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Biography

For the past 30 years Ed Hurt and his team members have conducted research on the structural and functional analysis of the yeast nuclear pore complex and the mechanism of nuclear transport. This work has also involved investigation of other cell machines, especially those that assemble and export mRNAs and ribosomal subunits.

Based on the genetic, biochemical and structural methods, we could dissect the yeast nuclear pore complex, followed by the identification and characterization of the primary nuclear mRNA export receptor and defining how it is coupled to transcription and chromatin modifying machineries. The other major research lead to the the dissection of the complicated biogenesis and export pathway of ribosomal subunits with identification of a series of ribosomal assembly mediates including their structural analysis by electron microscopy.

Overall this work has given insight into the structure and function of macromolecular machines that are composed of a large number of subunits and transiently interacting biogenesis factors.