Future Science Group

In this podcast, Jade Parker, Editor of Oncology Central speaks to Dirk Arnold. Dirk Arnold is Director of the Dept. Medical Oncology at Klinik für Tumorbiologie, Freiburg, Germany. Before taking this position, he was 2010 appointed as Director of the University Cancer Centre in Hamburg (UCCH) and held positions at the University Departments for Oncology and Haematology in Halle-Wittenberg and Berlin. His major field of scientific interest are gastrointestinal cancers, and here specifically modern therapeutic approaches in biomarker-driven decision processes and multimodal treatment strategies. In this interview find out about the main treatment options for oligometastic rectal cancer and how we can define a treatment strategy for this disease. Prof Arnold also tells us how he hopes to see the field progress in the next 5-10 years. You can view more podcasts, plus the latest news and interviews with experts across oncology at www.oncology-central.com.

In this NCTalks podcast, Lauren Pulling, Editor of Neuro Central, is joined by Claude Wischik. Prof Wischik is board-certified in psychiatry and a professor of Old Age Psychiatry at the University of Aberdeen (UK). A pioneer in tau research, he discovered the tau protein compositional structure of Alzheimer’s tangles and established that it was possible to dissolve these tangles with pharmaceutically viable compounds that act as Tau Aggregation Inhibitors. Prof Wischik is also co-founder, chairman and chief executive of TauRx Therapeutics, which aims to develop new treatments for a range of neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease. In this interview, Prof Wischik discusses his 30 years’ experience in the field, the latest developments at TauRx, and what we can expect from tau research the next 10 years. You can view more podcasts, plus the latest news and interviews with experts across neurology and neuroscience, at www.neuro-central.com.

How can we bring Parkinson’s disease into the age of personalized medicine? One such approach recently described by Alberto Espay (University of Cincinnati, OH, USA) is to subtype the disease according to the presence of certain biomarkers. This is an approach that he says could “up the ante in our ability to modify the disease”, moving us away from purely dopaminergic strategies that address only the ‘common denominator’ of the disease. We caught up with Dr Espay at the American Academy of Neurology Annual Meeting (Boston, MA, USA, 22–28 April), where he told us more about his call for a biomarker-driven approach to subtyping Parkinson’s, and how this could change the way we both research and treat the disease. You can find more podcasts, as well as the latest news and expert opinions across neuroscience and neurology, at www.neuro-central.com

Whilst at the AAN Annual Meeting (Boston, MA, USA, 22–28 April) last month, we caught up with Regina Katzenschlager, Medical University Vienna and Danube Hospital (both Vienna, Austria), whose research into the use of apomorphine for Parkinson’s disease was highlighted at the conference as one to watch. In this interview, Regina tells us more about the recent Phase III trial, which provided evidence that the drug apomorphine, first produced in 1865, could be effective in the management of advanced Parkinson’s disease. Study data demonstrated that patients given apomorhpine infusion had a significantly greater reduction in ‘off’ time compared with those who were given a placebo infusion. Regina also discusses how she anticipates these recent findings could change the way clinicians prescribe apomorphine to patients. You can find more podcasts, as well as the latest news across neurology and neuroscience, at www.neuro-central.com

Helen McShane discusses her work leading the TB vaccine research program at Oxford University, and shares her thoughts on the challenges facing vaccine development and eradication of this disease.

Listen to this interview with Peter Stern (University of Manchester, UK) to discover more about chemotherapy resistance in acute lymphoblastic leukemia and novel strategies to overcome it.

While at the AAN Annual Meeting (Boston, MA, USA, 22–28 April 2017), we spoke with Dr Michael Alosco, a fellow at Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease and CTE Center(MA, USA), who is currently working on multiple projects looking at chronic traumatic encephalopthy (CTE)in both living and deceased patients. Michael discussed his work, progress towards diagnosis of CTE in life and his thoughts on the latest in CTE research. You can find more NCTalks podcasts, as well as the latest news, journal articles and interviews with experts across neuroscience and neurology at www.neuro-central.com

Reporting from ECCMID17, we spoke to William Irving about his current work on hepatitis C and his thoughts on the future of this field.

Whilst at the American Academy of Neurology’s Annual Meeting (Boston, MA, USA, 22–28 April 2017), we sat down with Michael Pender (University of Queensland, Australia), who was presenting promising interim findings from a Phase 1 study investigating a novel treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS) at the meeting. In this interview, Dr Pender discusses the relationship between MS and the Epstain-Barr virus; a link that has been observed in recent studies, and which forms the basis of this most recent clinical trial. In the Phase I study, researchers removed the T cells from six patients with progressive MS, stimulated the T cells to increase their ability to recognize and destroy Epstein-Barr virus-infected B cells, and the injected these T cells in infusions every 2 weeks over a 6-week period. At this interim point, three participants have showed improvement, with one showing “striking improvement”. In the interview, Dr Pender, lead researcher of the trial, discusses the key findings of the trial, and the next

In this interview, Joop Arends discusses his thoughts on the future of diagnosis and management of hepatitis C, and also gives us his highlights from ECCMID.

In this interview, Greg Roman (Waters Corporation, USA) shares his experience with instrumentation and techniques such as LC–MS and HRMS and explains what drew him to the field.

In this edition of NCTalks, Lauren Pulling speaks to Emery Brown, Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School (MA, USA). Dr Brown has delivered a number of lectures in recent years on deciphering the dynamics of the brain under general anaesthesia, and how the potential of this area may currently be under-utilized. In this podcast we’ll hear more about Dr Brown’s work, how general anesthesia can be used to understand and develop new treatments for neurological and psychiatric conditions, and we’ll look ahead at the future of the field.

In this EpigenomicsNet podcast, Professor Hendrik Stunnenberg (Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands) discusses his work in gene expression, investigating regulatory epigenetic mechanisms and provides a summary of his talk on the epigenome of innate immune cells.

In this EpigenomicsNet podcast, Dr En Li (Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Shanghai, China) discusses his work leading Novartis’ research program in Shanghai and provides a summary of his talk on Novartis’ epigenetic research in cancer.

In this EpigenomicsNet podcast, Dr Danette Daniels (Promega, Madison, WI, USA) discusses her work at Promega in the area of functional proteomics and provides a summary of her talk introducing Promega’s technologies to study and characterize protein interactions inside cells, particularly for chromatin analysis.

In this MedChemNet podcast, Professor Paul Fish (University College London, UK) discusses his work in Alzheimer’s drug discovery and the talk he delivered on the discovery of fit for purpose chemical probes to investigate bromodomain proteins and the three new drug discovery institutes funded by Alzheimer’s research UK.

In this MedChemNet podcast, Professor Michelle Arkin (University of California, San Francisco; San Francisco, CA, USA) discusses her work in academic drug discovery and chemical biology and the talk she delivered on the progression of inhibiting protein-protein interactions and utilizing this to potentially re-modulate disease networks to a healthy state.

In this MedChemNet podcast, Dr Gemma Nixon (University of Liverpool, UK) discusses her work in antimalarial, antituberculosis, anti-filariasis and antifungal drug discovery and development and the talk she delivered on the development of the antimalarial E209.

In this podcast Dr Elizabeth Whittaker, Dr James Seddon, Dr Pete Dodd and Professor Beate Kampmann discuss their work in pediatric tuberculosis focusing on the areas of immunology, modelling and drug resistance.

In this edition of NCTalks, we speak to Robyn Klein, a Professor of Medicine, Immunobiology and Neuroscience at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri in the USA. Robyn’s research focuses on the pathogenesis of neuroinflammatory diseases in the CNS, specifically the mechanism of leukocyte recruitment into the CNS, and the direct effects of inflammatory mediators on resident neural cells. In this interview, we ask Robyn about her work in this area as part of our Spotlight on neuroimmunology – we’ll discuss Robyn’s research, how inflammatory processes contribute to neurologic disease, and whether immunology and inflammation could be the basis of an eventual preventative treatment for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. You can find more podcasts, articles and news at www.neurology-central.com