ajs21

Dr Alan Stewart, Dr Swati Arya and Dr Peter Caie have been awarded a £89,415 grant from Tenovus Scotland for a new project entitled “Assessment of the predictive value of plasma proteins in oesophageal adenocarcinoma treatment”. The funding will support a PhD studentship due to start later in the year. Applications are now open to candidates who are interested in applying for this studentship. They must hold a first or upper-second class degree (and/or an MSc/MRes degree) in Molecular & Cellular Biology, Biochemistry, Chemistry (Analytical) or a related subject from a recognised academic institution. Full details are available here.

Dr Alan Stewart has been appointed to the editorial board of the journal, Scientific Reports – an online open access “mega journal” from the publishers of Nature. The journal publishes scientifically valid primary research from all areas of the natural and clinical sciences. Alan will serve on the journal’s Chemical Biology board.

The Metal Ions in Medicine group would like to say a big congratulations to (Dr) Amelie Sobczak on passing her PhD viva!!

Dr Alan Stewart represented the Metal Ions in Medicine team at the Obesity and Diabetes Conference in Rome held between 25th-26th Februray 2019. Whilst there he gave a keynote talk titled “Influence of free fatty acids on plasma zinc handling by albumin: Impact on coagulation in diabetes”. As an organising committe member he would like to thank all who attended and presented during the meeting.

Dendritic cells are key immune cells that respond to pathogens and co-ordinate many innate and adaptive immune responses. Dr Swati Arya and Dr Dagmara Wiatrek-Moumoulidis from the Stewart group, together with Dr Simon Powis and researchers from the Mass Spectrometry team in St Andrews (led Dr Sally Shirran) have used SWATH-MS to quantitively measure proteomic changes that occur in monocyte-derived dendritic cells (moDCs) following activation by lipopolysaccharide (LPS). A moDC library of 4,666 proteins was generated and proteins were quantified at 0, 6 and 24 h post-LPS stimulation using SWATH-MS. Functional annotation of proteins exhibiting significant changes in expression between the various time points led to the identification of clusters of proteins implicated in distinct cellular processes including interferon and interleukin signalling, endocytosis, the ER-phagosome pathway and antigen-presentation. This study provides new detailed insight into the global proteomic changes that occur in moDCs during antigen processing and presentation and further demonstrate the potential of SWATH-MS for the quantitative study of proteins involved in cellular processes. This work will be published in the online open-access journal, Scientific Reports.

On 26th November Dr Alan Stewart attended a networking dinner at the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh to help launch a new charity focused on developing a cure for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a debilitating eye disease that affects millions of people worldwide. In the UK alone there are more than 685,000 people with significant sight loss as a consequence of late-stage AMD. The new charity has been founded by four leading site loss charities, Blind Veterans UK, Fight for Sight, the Macular Society and Scottish War Blinded.

During a recent trip to the USA, Dr Alan Stewart visited the laboratory of Prof Wladek Minor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Virginia – Charlotteslville and on the 15th November gave a seminar there entitled “Allosteric regulation of plasma zinc dynamics by free fatty acids: A potential driver of cardiovascular complications in disease states”. He then went on to Dallas, Texas to attend the Proteomics-2018 conference (19th-20th November) where he gave an invited talk entitled “The hydroxyapatite interactome in age-related macular degeneration”.

Congratulations to Dr Swati Arya who was awarded a £5,000 grant at the School of Medicine Research Away Day held at the Byre Theatre. Swati made a successful pitch for the cash at a Dragons Den-style event. The funding will be spent on a new collaborative pilot project (with Dr Peter Caie and Dr Alan Stewart, both University of St Andrews and Dr Margaret Dunne, Trinity College Dublin) focussed on identifying early biomarkers for esophageal cancer using SWATH-MS. Swati also gave a talk at the event entitled “The hydroxyapatite interactome in age-related macular degeneration”.

The Stewart group are grateful to the organisers of the recent Frontiers in Cardiovascular Biology (FCVB) meeting in Vienna, Austria, which was held between 20-22nd April. Dr Alan Stewart, Dr Siavash Khazaipoul and Amelie Sobczak were in attendance for the three-day conference and both Siavash and Amelie (pictured below) presented posters on their work.

The glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) heparan sulfate, dermatan sulfate and heparin are important anticoagulants that inhibit clot formation. Unfractionated heparin, low molecular weight heparin and heparin-derived drugs are often the main treatments used clinically to handle coagulatory disorders. Such agents are neutralised endogenously by a wide range of proteins to control coagulation. In a recent article by Amelie Sobczak, Samantha Pitt and Alan Stewart, a review of GAG neutralisation, the proteins involved and the molecular processes that contribute to the regulation of anticoagulant GAG activity is presented. The review will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal, Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology.