Worlds of technology and biology collide at two-day conference

Spotlight in systems biology and synthetic biology at the College - News

By Danielle Reeves
13 November 2007

World experts in a new scientific field which fuses science and engineering with biological and medical research are gathering at Imperial College London today for the first Autumn Symposium on Systems and Synthetic Biology.

The symposium is the first major international event hosted by Imperial's Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology which was founded in April 2007. The Institute's goal is to facilitate the application of the College's engineering, physical sciences, mathematical and computer-modelling expertise to solve biological and medical problems.

Speakers from top universities in the UK, USA and Europe, and leading pharmaceutical companies, will address the entire spectrum of systems and synthetic biology at the symposium, from the level of individual cells and molecules, up to organs and physiological systems, and the development of new technologies using these techniques.

Speakers from Imperial include Professor Paul Freemont, discussing the College's latest research in synthetic biology to engineer a biologically-based infection detector. This liquid-based device, which is applied to the outside of hospital catheters, glows red to alert doctors to early-stage infections on the catheter. This device has been researched and developed by a team including 10 undergraduate students from Biochemistry and Bioengineering, who recently won a gold award for the project at MIT’s International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition.

The College's Professor Jeremy Nicholson from the Faculty of Medicine will speak about his work using systems biology techniques to build predictive models of drug metabolism and toxicity that are necessary for personalised healthcare solutions in the future. The approaches he will describe can also be applied to define the metabolism of whole human populations on a massive scale, and to determine the factors that affect their changing health patterns.

Professor David Klug from the College's Department of Chemistry will talk about his work on a GBP 5 million technology development programme to create new tools and techniques for analysing the composition and chemistry of proteins. He is working with colleagues to develop new technologies to track stem cell behaviour, search for biomarkers of disease and to understand the complex relationships between the parts of a cell that are thought to underpin the varying responses different people have to drugs and medicines.

Professor Richard Kitney from Imperial's Department of Bioengineering and Chairman of the Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology said: "I'm delighted to welcome so many high profile speakers from around the world to join us for this symposium at a very exciting time for this new area of science. As the traditional boundaries between different disciplines like engineering and medicine become increasingly blurred, researchers are finding that pooling their expertise and learning from each other's techniques is vital for tackling some of the most pressing problems in the world today."

Opening the symposium, Imperial's Rector Sir Richard Sykes said: "Our American colleagues are currently very much at the forefront of this science - I hope they won't mind too much when I say that Imperial intends to be right there with them."

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