Dr Andrew Kellett receives SFI CDA award

Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Career Development Award

SFI have awarded Dr Andrew Kellett a prestigious Career Development Award (CDA). The project, Polynuclear Platinum(II) Biomaterials (PPtBio) for Antisense Therapeutic Application and Detection of Human Genetic Disease, will begin in December of 2016 and involves collaborators:  Prof Nicholas P Farrell (Virginia Commonwealth University, USA), Prof Tom Brown (University of Oxford), Dr Niall Barron (Director of NICB, DCU, Ireland), and ATDBio Ltd. (Oxford and Southampton, UK). A total award of €642,150 for the PPtBio project was announced today (October 18th) by Minister of State for Training, Skills and Innovation, John Halligan TD. Full details can be found here: http://www.sfi.ie/news-resources/press-releases/minister-halligan-announces-research-investment-of-€22.3-million-in-next-generation-of-research-talent.html.  

From Left to Right: Jiafu Wang, Susan Kelleher, Professor Greg Hughes, Director General of Science Foundation Ireland and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of Ireland, Professor Mark Ferguson, Andrew Kellett, Minister of State for Training, Skills and Innovation, John Halligan TD, James Walsh, Prince Anandarajah, Robert Forster, Jianghui Meng, Professor Oliver Dolly, Kevin McGuiness

Prof. Bernard Golding visits DCU

Professor Bernard T. Golding Seminar

Molecular structure of Rucaparib

Professor Golding of Newcastle University and NewChem Technologies today (Oct. 14th) visited DCU and two of our research centres, the NICB and NRF.  He delivered an excellent seminar on "Design, Synthesis and Biological Activities of Novel Anticancer Agents" where he spoke of his research at Newcastle that has led to potent inhibitors of cyclin dependent kinase 2 (CDK2) and poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP). This research led directly to the discovery of potent small molecule PARP inhibitors and initiation of a pre-clinical collaboration with Agouron Pharmaceuticals (San Diego) resulted in the identification of rucaparib, the first-in-class PARP inhibitor for clinical evaluation in cancer patients. More than 200 patients have received this Newcastle-Agouron drug rucaparib and in the earliest clinical trials (2003 and 2005), some patients had a life expectancy of only a few months, but of these seven most are still alive and cancer-free. 

Creina Slator wins best poster prize

Creina Slator wins best overall poster at the 1st Medicinal Chemistry Conference of Ireland

Congratulations to Creina on winning a poster prize at the 1st Medicinal Chemistry Conference of Ireland!! The meeting was held at the TBSI in Trinity College Dublin today (July 1st) and featured a range of international and national speakers along with over 50 poster presentations. Poster prizes were kindly sponsored by Catalent.