Author: Admin

…in Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry. Many Congratulations to Rainbow!!!

DNA can form non-canonical structures including so-called G4 DNA quadruplexes. Their formation in vivo has been associated with a range of biological functions, hence they have been identified as potential drug targets, and G4 DNA-binding drug candidates have been developed. Here, we report the functionalisation of one of these well-established G4 DNA binders (based on a square planar platinum(II)-salphen complex) with two different radiolabelled complexes. An ¹¹¹In-conjugate was successfully used by Rainbow to assess its in vivo distribution in a mouse tumour model using single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging. Rainbow’s work highlighted the accumulation of this Pt-salphen-¹¹¹In conjugate in the tumour.

This was a fantastic small meeting – exciting science, lovely colleagues! And beyond all the great science and talks – and they included opportunities to present on the international level also for PhD students (see Ines below!) – the organizers had chosen a superb location right at the beach with great food and ensured there was plenty of time for networking.

The COMULIS COST Action (Correlated Multimodal Imaging in Life Sciences) organised their 3rd conference at The Cyprus Institute in Nicosia in September 2023. First time for our lab to present at this meeting – thanks to the organisers. The conference put emphasis on correlative imaging methods able to capture the dynamics of life, spanning the whole range from molecular resolution to imaging whole organisms.

What we previously took for granted, has not been possible for many many moons – and so anticipation was very high for our first in-person lab Away Day for a very long times. We went on a river cruise from the on the Thames, added a few kilometers of walk on the riverbank enjoying the fabulous weather, before arriving at the Fuller’s Griffin Brewery. The team there gave us a great tour, and it even included beer tasting in their famous Hock Cellar. We concluded with splendid pub food nearby.

Many thanks to John Isaac for organising this superb 5th international Therapeutic Tolerance Workshop in Newcastle. Thanks for inviting me to give a perspective on tracking therapeutic cells in vivo. It was scientifically fantastic, extremely inspiring, and I got to meet so many extremely new great colleagues.

Congratulations to Rico, first, for getting an oral presentation at the European Molecular Imaging Meeting 2022 (competition is larege and strong!) and, second, for a very well presented talk entitled “Cancer cell tracking for the evaluation of EGFR and PD-L1 knowckdown in NSCLC models”.

… on charaterizing the in vitro toxicity of the radioisotope Technetium-99m published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

This was a rather multidisciplinary endeavour spanning biochemitry, fluorescence microscopy, whole-body imaging, and dosimetry. Ines got later awarded a Student Prize at the British Nuclear Medicine Society for this. Very well done by Ines, who drove the project, and also very well done by everyone contributing to this important paper. The data presented will further guide the safe use of Tc-99m during imaging and other applications.

Proudly reporting that a significant part of Yasmin’s PhD work was recently published in the Eur. J. Immunol. Have a look at her work entitled “Chimeric antigen receptor-modified human regulatory T cells that constitutively express IL-10 maintain their phenotype and are potently suppressive” which informs on IL-10 co-expression in CAR-Treg cells providing an additional advantage to their intended suppressive capacity. Yasmin’s work provides an important proof-of-principle for this cell engineering approach for next-generation Treg therapy in transplantation.

Many congratulations to Ben for successfully passing his viva today and soon putting crossing the ultimate finishing line for his studies for a PhD degree at King’s.