11:30 – 11:45 Tamara Bolersdorf: Metal-based luminescence for targeting Formyl Peptide Receptors in inflammmation
11:45 – 12:00 James Hindley: Development of tumour microenvironment-sensing lipid vesicles for prostate cancer drug delivery
12:00 – 13:00 Main Visiting Speaker: Professor Angela J. Russell – Chemistry for regenerative medicine: Discovery of small molecules to manipulate stem cell fate
Abstract
The ability to harness the potential of adult stem and precursor cells would be a major advance in the treatment of human disease. They are remarkable cells characterized by their ability to divide and to differentiate via a number of steps to embryonic and adult somatic cell lineages. Such cells thus hold enormous promise both for in vitro screening tools for drug efficacy and toxicity testing, and especially for regenerative therapies treating a wide range of disorders with high unmet medical need such as neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes, heart disease, and vision loss.
The discovery of small molecules to control cell fate has attracted immense interest in recent years. The ability to control each step in proliferation, differentiation and dedifferentiation/ reprogramming processes would allow control of the selective production of different tissue types both in vitro and, importantly in many instances, directly in vivo. The use of chemicals to manipulate cell fate offers many significant advantages over other techniques in terms of speed, cost, reproducibility and the ability to influence cell fate reversibly.
The talk will give a brief overview of the area, outline how my group became involved in the field and cover contributions we have made, particularly to induce the proliferation and differentiation of stem cells and how we are aiming to translate our work to the clinic for regenerative therapies.
Biography
Professor Angela J. Russell gained her DPhil in Organic Chemistry in 2004 under the joint supervision of Steve Davies and Tim Perera from Yamanouchi plc (now Astellas Pharma Inc.). In March 2006 she became a Departmental Research Lecturer in Organic Chemistry and in July 2007 was awarded a prestigious Research Councils’ UK Fellowship in Medicinal Chemistry. In 2014 she became an Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry. In her academic career Angela has realised several successful multidisciplinary research collaborations, including identifying small molecules to upregulate utrophin for the treatment of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, developing novel inhibitors and activators of developmental signaling pathways and new anti-cancer agents. Since 2005 Angela has initiated a number of collaborative programmes involving the discovery and development of small molecules to manipulate stem cell fate. Angela has published over 80 original articles, book chapters and patent applications. She co-founded the Oxford spin-out MuOx Ltd, acquired by Summit Therapeutics plc in 2013, and co-founded OxStem Ltd in May 2016. OxStem Ltd aims to identify new classes of drugs that can re-programme or stimulate existing endogenous cells to repair tissues in age-related conditions including cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and heart failure. The company raised £16.9M, a record for a UK spin-out, to fund the development of a series of daughter companies. In November 2016, Angela was named as a ‘Rising Star’ in the ‘BioBeat 50 Movers and Shakers in BioBusiness 2016’ report. Released annually, the report celebrates 50 outstanding women entrepreneurs and business leaders who are recognised for their contributions to global health innovation.