Pint of science- Let's get physical: atomic medicine

To physicists battling the biggest and baddest diseases, size matters. Discover how giant particle accelerators annihilate cancer and how nanotechnology may help capture tiny viral particles, such as HIV, before they can wreak havoc in the body. During the event there will be a pub quiz with special Pint of Science and Mendeley goodies to be won! This event will be held in the basement.

How the Large Hadron Collider Cures Cancer - Dr Simon Jolly (Lecturer)

Have you ever wondered what connects the Large Hadron Collider to cancer treatment? In this talk I will describe how accelerators developed for particle physics are used for treating cancer with proton beam therapy. Along the way I will talk about how we use beams of radiation to treat cancer effectively and why the machines needed for proton beam therapy are so large and complex, along with a sneak peak at the NHS’ new proton beam therapy facilities.

What spaghetti and meatballs tell about nuclear viral import - Professor Bart Hoogenboom (Professor of Biophysics)

In each of our cells, gates filled with whirly spaghetti protect the storage room - the nucleus - that contains our DNA. This spaghetti has very peculiar properties: It acts like a sieve that prevents caster sugar from entering the nucleus, but that lets rice grains pass if they have the right flavour. Most dangerously, some of these rice grains are viruses, such as hepatitis B virus and HIV. Physics has powerful tools to describe the behaviour of whirly spaghetti, and indeed recent research indicates that these tools can help us to understand how viruses find their way into the cell nucleus.

Tickets available on the event website.