LSRNW’s 3rd Annual Drug Discovery Congress awards CCMRC student best presentation prize

The Life Sciences Research Network Wales (LSRNW), which supports world class science within Wales, hosted its 3rd Annual Drug Discovery Congress on 30th November and 1st December 2016 at St David’s Hotel, Cardiff.

Ser Cymru funded researchers were invited to share their research progress, discuss the challenges faced in developing the next generation of therapeutics, strengthen collaborations and find new partnerships across the academic community, both internationally and in Wales. The event, which was opened by Welsh Government’s Minister for Skills and Science, Julie James, with an address on the growth of the Life Sciences sector in Wales, welcomed attendees including students and leading academics whose work has successfully led to commercialisation, as well as industry representatives with substantial experience in the drug development pathway.

Selected PhD students and postdoctoral researchers were invited to present an update on their research; including the development of the next generation  of drugs to tackle major societal health issues such as, cancer, antimicrobial resistance and neurodegenerative diseases.

Miss Bethan Frugtniet, 3rd year PhD student, CCMRC, delivered an award-winning presentation on the key findings from her PhD project, ‘Validation of nWASP as a therapeutic target in chronic and non-healing human wounds.’ The talk explained how the protein nWASP has been identified as an indicator of prognosis of wound healing and as a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of chronic wounds and explored the discovery of a novel connection between nWASP and TrkB signalling.

Miss Frugtniet said:

Researchers were additionally invited to attend ‘Platform clinics’ throughout the two days. Scientific leads for each of the ten clinics, explained how platforms could be used to take research forwards.

Dr Tracey Martin, Lecturer, CCMRC said,

The LSRNW is led by Cardiff University and is part of the Welsh Government’s £50 million Sêr Cymru programme, aimed at building research capacity and bringing together research expertise in the Life Sciences within Wales. Since LSRNW launched in September 2013, it has awarded more than £5.5m to over 125 individual research projects, engaged with over 80 Principal Investigators; each awarded for their outstanding research proposals and has supported 56 PhD students across Wales and 70 postdoctoral researchers. Further information can be found on the LSRNW website or by contacting Dr Andrea Brancale, Scientific Director, LSRNW.