Wednesday 11 March 2020 Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh @EdinUniNeuro #EdinNeuroDay Neuroscience Day 2020 Supporters 2 Programme 08.30 Arrival and Registration Session 1 Chaired by: Professor Siddharthan Chandran, Director, Edinburgh Neuroscience 09.00 Welcome Prof Siddharthan Chandran, Director, Edinburgh Neuroscience 09.05 The Edinburgh City Deal: Opportunities for Data-Driven Innovation at Scale Professor Aziz Sheik, Usher Institute 09.30 Troubled translation in autism Dr Emily Osterweil, Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences 09.55 Neuroanatomy of Core Language Systems: A Data-Driven Journey Dr Dan Mirman, Psychology 10.20 Shout-outs, Edinburgh Innovations, the CMVM Impact team, UK Centre for Mammalian Synthetic Biology 10.30 Coffee & Posters Session 2 Chaired by: Dr Sue Fletcher-Watson, Salvesen Mindroom Research Centre 11.00 Fellows Session Elucidating RNA metabolism changes in neurological disease, Dr Chris Sibley, Sir Henry Dale Fellow, Centre for Systems and Synthetic Biology and Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain Astrocytes in health and disease, Dr Blanca Diaz-Castro, Programme Leader (Fellow), UK Dementia Research Institute at Edinburgh Dissecting neural circuits underlying cognition: An in vivo single-cell physiology approach, Dr Jian Gan, Programme Leader (Fellow), UK Dementia Research Institute at Edinburgh People and place memory recruits distinct regions of human medial parietal cortex, Dr Edward Silson, Lecturer in Visual Perception, Psychology 12.00 The rise and fall of microglia driving central nervous system remyelination, Dr Veronique Miron, Centre for Reproductive Health 12.25 Psychosis & contextual vulnerability: developmental pathways to risk & resilience, Professor Matthias Schwannauer, Clinical Psychology 12.50 WT Translational Neuroscience PhD Programme - TN2, Professor Stephen Lawrie, Programme Director, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences 12.40 Lunch & Posters (1.45pm, New Library, short presentation for supervisors on the Translational Neuroscience PhD programme and those PIs interested to find out more) 3 Session 3 Chaired by: Professor Anna Williams, MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine 14.15 Student Data Blitz An integrated study of placenta, blood and brain MRI implicates IL-8 dysregulation in preterm brain injury, Ms Gemma Sullivan, Centre for Reproductive Health Pre-symptomatic developmental phenotypes in Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Ms Anna Motyl, Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences Single cell immune profiling in stroke identifies target cellular states for precision medicine, Mr Anirudh Patir, Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences and UK Dementia Research Institute The effects of sleep/wake cycles on the synaptome maps of the mouse brain, Ms Dimitra Koukaroudi, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences 14.40 Brain signatures of depression, Dr Heather Whalley, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences 15.05 Generation Scotland – supporting health data neuroscience across the life-course, Professor David Porteous, Institute for Genetics & Molecular Medicine 15.30 Tea & Posters Session 4 Chaired by: Professor Siddharthan Chandran, Director, Edinburgh Neuroscience 16.00 Annual Distinguished Lecture in Neuroscience 2020 Retinal repair through transplantation of ES-derived photoreceptor cells: a vision for the future, Professor Robin Ali, Professor of Human Molecular Genetics, Institute of Ophthalmology, Faculty of Brain Sciences, University College London 17.00 Drinks Reception in the Conference Centre Foyer 18.00 Close of Meeting 4 Edinburgh Neuroscience Activity Round Up 2020 It has been another busy and exciting year and that is thanks to the energy, engagement and enthusiasm of our neuroscience researcher community – thank you everyone! A successful year that bodes well for the future Over the past year, our researchers have had a number of large funding successes which provide a platform for building a portfolio of exciting research projects into the future. These include: £15.3 million donation from author J.K. Rowling to support the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic, (Director: Prof Siddharthan Chandran) which was set up following a previous donation in 2010, and is named in memory of her mother who died of MS, aged 45. This generous new gift will help create new facilities and support vital research focusing on MS and neurological conditions such as motor neurone disease, Parkinson's, and dementias, aiming to support and conduct clinical studies and trials. It will also support projects focusing on the invisible disabilities experienced by people with MS, such as cognitive impairment and pain. Following the retirement of Shuna Colville as ARRNC Manager last year, Judy Newton has now taken on this role. ARRNC website. £12 million from the Simons Foundation secures the future of the Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain (SIDB) (Director: Prof Peter Kind) from 2022 – 2025. This advanced renewal is a particularly welcome investment since it allows for long term experimental planning for a major programme of fundamental and clinical autism research, over a timeframe that can encourage the development of innovative experimental approaches. SIDB website. £12.1 million from Cancer Research UK and The Brain Tumour Trust to researchers in the Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Centre, MRC Institute of Genetics & Molecular Medicine for projects to investigate which drugs best target glioblastoma, one of the hardest types of cancer to treat because not enough is known about what starts and drives the disease. Prof Neil Carragher was awarded £6.3M to identify and target the best drug combinations which target these aggressive brain tumours. He will be working with colleagues at MIT to develop prototype nanoparticles which are able to cross the blood-brain barrier and carry multiple drugs at the same time. Dr Steven Pollard was awarded £5.8M to investigate how to prevent tumours from growing back by trying to control the movement of dormant cancer cells to active ones. CRUK EC website £5.5 million from Wellcome to fund the PhD Programme in Translational Neuroscience for 5 further intakes of students, starting in September 2020. This was the only Wellcome funded neuroscience-related PhD programme in the UK to be renewed. Prof Stephen Lawrie will take over as Lead Director of ‘TN2’, supported by co-directors Prof David Price, Prof Tara Spires-Jones, Prof Peter Kind, Prof Anna Williams, and Dr Sue Fletcher-Watson. TN2 website €6 million to establish a new Fondation Leducq international consortium, Stroke-ImPACT, which will investigate the role of neuroimmune mechanisms influencing cognitive trajectory after stroke. Eleven researchers from nine institutions in four countries, including Dr Barry McColl (UK Dementia Institute at Edinburgh and Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences), will establish an international network of stroke researchers and trained young researchers in the field, plus collate an international resource of clinical and pre-clinical data to enable discovery of new ways of preventing post-stroke cognitive decline over the next 5 years. Stroke-ImPACT news announcement $0.5 million from the Alzheimer's Drug Development Foundation global philanthropist funded (including Bill Gates) Diagnostics Accelerator Program for a project led by Dr Tom MacGillivray with Prof Craig Ritchie, Prof Bal Dhillon and Dr Graciela Muniz Terrera (all Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences). Aimed at delivering novel neuro-retinal biomarkers for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, this study will employ a novel combination of retinal biomarkers capturing neurodegeneration and vasculature dysfunction often found in Alzheimer's disease with advanced imaging analyses. ADDF news announcement The Euan MacDonald Centre and partners launched UK recruitment for a new clinical trial MND-SMART. The trial, led by Prof Siddharthan Chandran and Dr Suvnakar Pal (both Centre for Clinical Bran Sciences) has been designed to find effective medicines more quickly, and be adaptive so that the researchers can modify their approach according to emerging results. Initially researchers will test drugs that are already licensed for use in other conditions to check whether they offer any benefit for people with MND. This launch was the top news item on BBC news and has now registered 20% of the total UK MND patient pool. MND-SMART website 5 New Initiatives that promise new horizons AstronauTx Ltd, secured £6.5 million from the Dementia Discovery Fund, a Venture Capital Fund dedicated to dementia-orientated start-ups to spin-out the company which will target astrocytes to restore their homeostatic function as treatments for dementias. Prof Giles Hardingham is the scientific co-founder and advisory board member and the company will focus on targets arising from work conducted by Prof Paul Whiting at the University College London Alzheimer’s Research UK Drug Discovery Institute, as well as the UK Dementia Research Institute at Edinburgh. AstronauTx news announcement Pheno Therapeutics is a new spin-out company focussed on multiple sclerosis which has secured a £5 million commitment over three years from Advent Life Sciences (London-based venture capital firm), the Scottish Investment Bank (with the backing from the Scottish Government through the Scottish Growth Scheme) and independent medical research charity LifeArc. Co-founded by Prof Siddharthan Chandran (Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences) and Prof Neil Carragher (Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Centre, MRC Institute of Genetics & Molecular Medicine) the company will search