July 2025

Tanya gave a lecture on the use of zebrafish chemical screening for drug discovery at the 44th European School of Medicinal Chemistry (ESMEC), in beautiful Urbino, Italy.  Many thanks to the organisers for the invitation, and to all the students for their hard work and enthusiasm on the course!

In Sheffield, we hosted a visit from our collaborator Dr Giselle Wiggin from Nxera Pharma, a GPCR-based drug discovery company based in Cambridge.  Giselle gave a seminar and met with lab members, in addition to discussing collaborative projects. 

Later in the month, Nahal paid a reciprocal visit to the Nxera Pharma labs in Cambridge.  She gave a talk on her PhD project on the adhesion GPCR Adgrg6, and enjoyed a day of discussions with colleagues there.  She also met up with former PhD student Anzar Asad, who is now employed at the company and doing well:

Anzar -- Nxera Pharma team -- Nahal

We also enjoyed two excellent one-day meetings held in Sheffield: a BSDB Northern Developmental Biology meeting, at which Haseeb gave a talk, and a symposium for the Bateson Centre for Disease Mechanisms.

Congratulations to former undergraduate summer project student Isabella Russell-Smith, who graduated with a First Class MBiomedSci degree this month.  Issi will be soon be starting a PhD at Imperial College London (UK Dementia Research Institute) supervised by Dr Samuel Barnes, with the aim of developing new treatments for Alzheimer's disease.