UCL Research Department of Cell and Developmental Biology

CDB PhD student Ricardo Laranjeiro has won first prize (£250) in the Division's Research Poster Competition.

Date: Friday 1st June, 2012
Time: 10.30am to 5pm
Location: Kennedy Lecture Theatre, Institute of Child Health, London
Keynote Speaker: Professor Liz Robertson 

The Research Department of Cell and Developmental Biology is delighted to announce the arrival of two new members of staff, Professor Giulio Cossu and Dr Jason Rihel. Follow the links to their research profiles on IRIS for more information.

CDB's Andrew Beale has been awarded the 1st prize of £400 in UCL's Poster Competition. The contest invites UCL research students to raise the profile of their research by creating an original, dynamic advertisement.  Andrew's winning entry was for his project, "The circadian clock of a blind cavefish can detect light".

Professor Patricia Salinas (UCL Department of Cell & Developmental Biology) and her research team have discovered that specific antibodies that block the function of a protein, called Dkk1, are able to completely suppress the toxic effect of Amyloid-ß on synapses. The findings were published last week in the Journal of Neuroscience. Read on for the full story. 

Plans to build a new research centre at UCL have been approved by London Borough of Camden, subject to referral to the Mayor.

Change the life of someone else – by saving your used postal stamps.

The stamps will be collected to support the Leprosy Mission, an international development organisation transforming and empowering the lives of people affected by leprosy. Its goal is to eradicate the causes and consequences of this disease. The Leprosy Mission works in around 30 countries across Africa, South Asia and East Asia. UCL Mail Services has agreed to collect your used stamps from each department at least once a month and then have them delivered to me during normal daily deliveries. Simply leave them in an internal envelope marked 'UCL Post Room' at your post tray in your office. Many thanks for your support, which will raise vital funds for the Leprosy Mission. Philip Flash, HR & Financial Administration, UCL Estates

CDB's Prof Susan Evans has co-authored a paper, published in Naturwissenschaften, detailing the oldest surviving fossil record of a pregnant lizard.

Cell and Developmental Biology is delighted to announce that Carlos Carmona-Fontaine, who completed his PhD with Prof. Roberto Mayor last year, will be awarded the prestigious Beddington Medal for 2011 by the British Society for Developmental Biology.

Helen Moore in Prof David Whitmore's lab in CDB, won First Prize in the Life Sciences category of the 2011 UCL Graduate School research poster competition.

UCL has been voted the best place for postdoctoral researchers to work, for the second consecutive year, in an international survey run by The Scientist magazine.

Professor Steve Wilson's lab has won two Wellcome Image Awards in this year's competition.  The two winning images from Prof Steve Wilson's lab in CDB are as follows:

The third Young Embryologist Network meeting will be held on Friday May 6th, 2011. The meeting is open for everyone to attend.

Have you ever wondered what happens to your neural pathways when a beautiful sunset makes you catch your breath? Or when you marvel at a portrait by a grand master?

There are no differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals or between women and men in terms of the brain systems regulating romantic love, according to new UCL research published in the latest issue of PLoS One.

The British painter Sargy Mann was diagnosed with cataracts at 36, and went on to lose his sight completely. But in his mind's eye his vision did not fade.

A hormone responsible for the onset of puberty can end up stuck in the wrong part of the body if the nerve pathways responsible for its transport to the brain fail to develop properly, according to research by CDB funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

UCL is delighted to announce the appointment of Professor John O'Keefe as Interim Director of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre.

Recent research grants awarded to members of the UCL Research Department of Cell and Developmental Biology include the following:

The mechanism that cells use to group together and move around the body has been discovered by CDB scientists - a finding that has implications for the development of new cancer treatments.

A team of scientists led by Dr Yasuyuki Fujita have discovered that two genes, called Mahjong and Lgl, could be star players in helping to identify how the body’s own cells fight back against cancer cells.

CDB scientists have discovered that sense of direction is represented in the brains of newborn rats before they have explored their environment.

Stephen Wilson is Professor of Developmental Genetics in the UCL Research department of Cell and Developmental Biology.

The winners of the fourth annual Excellence in Medical Education Awards have been annouced.

Dr Ali M Ghanem, a PhD student in our department has won two prestigious awards. Ali won first prize of the Syrian British Medical Society for his paper: "Surgical Management of the Spectrum of Submucous Cleft Palate (SMCP): Speech Outcome Following Anatomical Muscle Dissection Repair of the Palate".