Hastie Career Advancement Fund Award and Early Career Awards announced

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The Hastie Career Advancement Fund was launched in 2018 to honour the legacy of Emeritus Professor Nick Hastie and supports talented early-career scientists at the Institute of Genetics and Cancer to progress in their careers.

As former Director of the Institute and the MRC Human Genetics Unit, Professor Hastie played an active and inspirational role in the careers of hundreds of research scientists and continues to do so through the Fund. A committee of current researchers from across the Institute assessed the applications to select the winner. Awardees of the fund get the opportunity to present their work to Professor Hastie and receive his guidance, career advice and support.

Through the project which earned him this year’s award - Generation of a fluorescent reporter for a high-throughput small molecule screen for the treatment of LCC – Andy Badrock is working to understand the pathology of the rare, currently incurable neurological condition leukoencephalopathy with calcifications and cysts (LCC) which is caused by mutations in the non-protein encoding RNA U8.

I will use the Hastie Career Advancement Fund to generate a fluorescent reporter of U8 promoter activity for use in an automated, high-throughput small molecule screen in collaboration with Prof. Neil Carragher. The drug screen is a key component of my UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship application, and this award will hopefully demonstrate the feasibility of this approach, significantly strengthening my application. As an early career researcher with aspirations to run my own research programme, the mentoring provided by Prof. Nick Hastie as part of this award represents an absolute privilege, invaluable for my development towards independence.

Andy Badrock

Also announced were the 2021 winners of the Institute of Genetics and Cancer Early Career Awards. The programme was created to give researchers the opportunity to develop new ideas, novel training and to provide experience and practice in applying for research funding.

Congratulations to:

• Amina McDiarmid (Evans Lab) - Future Therapies for Alzheimier’s disease
• Amy Findlay (Vitart Lab) - Live cell imaging of collagen deposition and stromal assembly in a model of brittle cornea syndrome
• Carla Roca Bayerri (Dhir Lab) - Exploring the role of nuclear encoded mitochondrial RNA helicase in cellular homeostasis and innate immunity- possible link with interferonopathy.
• Fraser Miller (Wilkinson / Acosta Lab) - Confirming in vivo somatic genome editing using RNA in situ hydridisation
• Lukas Tamayo Orrego (A. Jackson Lab) - Cell cycle and S-phase time during mammalian development in 4D
• Robb Hollis (Gourley Lab) - Development of 3D models for low grade serious ovarian cancer
• Scott Waddell (Boulter/Mill Lab) - Targeting integrin signalling as a novel therapeutic approach for patients with polycystic liver disease

Hastie Career Advancement Fund

Celebrating the scientific and mentoring legacy of Professor Nick Hastie | The University of Edinburgh

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