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Biology @ Brunel Event 2018

As part of Brunel’s dedication to developing research and industrial partnerships and to promote collaboration between our cutting edge research groups, Biology at Brunel (B@B) is an event that showcases our latest research achievements. This event was originally born out of our desire to support cutting edge innovation involving animal research. As part of this initiative, Brunel has invested heavily in The Pash Centre, a brand new animal facility to provide the resources needed for Brunel researchers to compete internationally.

Further to this, Brunel supports the Concordat on Openness in Animal Research (COAR) to which the university became a signatory in 2014 that aims to encourage greater societal understanding to both human and animal disease. Transparency of our research is now underway by opening our laboratories for public education and to show that we work strictly within the government guidelines on UK animal welfare, whilst striving to find ways to refine, reduce and even replace (3Rs) animals in scientific research. Several competitive groups within the Department of Life Sciences have brought in significant funding from the MRC NC3Rs to achieve this goal, which makes Brunel proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with our competitors.

B@B also realises the efforts of the many researchers that carry out several highly exciting research projects that do not involve animals. Hence, this event is an opportunity to praise our highly diverse research environment.

Presentations included:

Wendy Jarrett, from Understanding Animal Research – ‘The Concordat on Openness: Why it's important to talk about animal research

Dr Alice Baynes – ‘Unexpected Endpoints: Pharmaceutical 5α-reductase inhibitors, designed to treat prostate cancer in men, disrupt gastropod morphogenesis during embryo development.’

Dr Mark Pook - ‘Investigating disease mechanisms and therapies for Friedreich ataxia’

Dr Luigi Margiotta-Casaluci  – ‘How do drugs work in the body? Novel approaches to understand and predict non-obvious effects of pharmaceuticals

Dr Svetlana Ignatova – ‘Spinning around – from molecules to particles and beyond

Dr Suzy Buckley, UCL – ‘'How flexible working can work for you - and your department'

Prof Paul Hellewell – ‘Mechanisms regulating leukocyte recruitment to sites of inflammation in vivo’

 

Staff and students were also able to look at the poster displays on several important topics over refreshments and coffee.