LMB In The News

“The Minister also attended a topping out ceremony at the new £200m building for the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. The new building, due to open in 2012, will provide first class facilities to some of the world’s leading scientists and stands as the flagship building for the extension of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. The lab will provide space and facilities for more than 400 researchers. David Willetts said: “This super-lab will be the global site for a new age of research collaborations aiming to alleviate human suffering. The MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology has already made great strides towards this goal, ploughing back more than £300m of commercial income generated by its discoveries into the life-saving science of the future. This new facility will build on that success.”” More…

“Parkinson’s disease might have much in common with Alzheimer’s disease, prion diseases and other protein-aggregation disorders… Like many other researchers, Goedert [LMB] now suspects that α-synuclein aggregation is the primary event in Parkinson’s disease — perhaps triggered by toxins or other environmental factors inside the intestines and sinuses. Most of the pathology in the brain appears typically to emanate from the dorsal motor nucleus, which is connected to intestinal neurons via the vagus nerve. In principle, α-synuclein aggregation could spread up this nerve and thereafter into most of the other affected regions.” More…

“Researchers have successfully used a drug to reset and restart the natural 24 hour body clock of mice in the lab. The ability to do this in a mammal opens up the possibility of dealing with a range of human difficulties including some psychiatric disorders, jet lag and the health impacts of shift work. This work is led by Professor Andrew Loudon from the University of Manchester and Dr Mick Hastings of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, working with a multi-disciplinary team of scientists from Pfizer led by Dr Travis Wager, and is published August 24 in PNAS.” More…

“A team of British and American scientists have found a drug which can slow down, kick start and reset the body clocks of mice. It does this by altering a key enzyme which controls the process, called casein kinase 1… He [Prof Loudon] and Dr Mick Hastings of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, worked with a team from Pfizer, the drugs company. Their findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were funded by the MRC and the Biological Sciences Research Council (BBS RC).” More…

“One route to developing new drugs is to look at targeting the hundreds of G-protein-coupled receptors that are not currently exploited clinically… Richard Henderson of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, an experienced researcher in membrane protein structure, describes them as ‘signalling molecules that control the whole of physiology.” More…

“The latest manifestation of the age-old rivalry between Cambridge and Oxford has been won by the light blues. Both cities ran Workplace Cycle Challenges between 7 and 27 June but it was Cambridge that managed to persuade more people onto their bikes, with 132 new cyclists compared to Oxford’s 117… The top teams in Cambridge were the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology, the British Antarctic Survey, the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, IUCN, Cambridge Mechatronics, Hinxton Hall finance department, and The Wellcome Trust.” More…