Converging on cancer seminar series – engineering and physical science to advance cancer research (Chemistry and Cancer

Converging on cancer seminar series – engineering and physical science to advance cancer research (Chemistry and Cancer - Cass and Ceroni)

9 December, 2020, 4 PM-5 PM

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Please join us for a live webinar on the 9th December 16.00–17.00 (GMT) at which Professor Axel Behrens (Cancer Research UK Convergence Science Centre Scientific Director) is pleased to host Professor Tony Cass and Dr Francesca Ceroni.

Professor Tony Cass – Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London

Nucleic acid aptamers as tools for sensing, imaging and probing function

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Dr Francesca Ceroni – Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London

Synthetic biology tools for controlled cell engineering

As part of its mission to facilitate collaboration between traditionally separate and distinct disciplines to innovate new ways to address challenges in cancer - the Cancer Research UK Convergence Science Centre will be bringing you a series of webinars over the coming months showcasing the expertise and technology of Imperial chemists, bioengineers, physicists and mathematicians. Please join us to inspire consideration of how these novel technologies could be used to shed light on unresolved problems in cancer biology and bring innovative treatment to cancer patients faster.

Join us for a live webinar on the 9thDecember 16.00–17.00 (GMT) at which Professor Axel Behrens (Cancer Research UK Convergence Science Centre Scientific Director) is pleased to host Professor Cass and Dr Ceroni.

Registration

To receive information about how to access this event please email icr-imperial-convergence.centre@imperial.ac.uk

Please note: This webinar is exclusively available only to colleagues across the Institute of Cancer Research, Imperial College London, the Royal Marsden Hospital and Imperial College Healthcare.

About the speakers and presentations:

Professor Tony Cass

Tony Cass is Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London and is based in the Molecular Sciences Research Hub on the White City campus. His main research interests are around point of need molecular analysis and wearable continuous monitoring devices.

Short single stranded synthetic RNA and DNA molecules can be selected to bind to virtually any molecular target with high specificity and sensitivity. Moreover, they can be readily modified to impart a wide range of functional properties that are linked to the binding reaction. In this talk Professor Cass will briefly describe the various ways that aptamers can be obtained and will illustrate their use in rapid detection of influenza sub-types, sensing pulsatile variations in hormone levels and live cell imaging of an intracellular proteins.

Dr Francesca Ceroni

Francesca Ceroni is a Lecturer in the Department of Chemical Engineering and member of the Imperial College Centre for Synthetic Biology. Her lab works on the development of host-aware synthetic biology tools for the engineering and control of bacterial and mammalian cells toward bioproduction and cell therapy.

Synthetic biology can provide tools to design more robust and controllable cell-based therapies. In this context, Dr Ceroni's lab is interested in designing cell engineering systems with low impact on the expression hosts, which has been highlighted as detrimental for long-term applications, while making them prone to precise control and activation. In this talk Dr Ceroni will discuss her groups current work in bacterial and mammalian cells and ongoing projects designing biosensors to target the tumour-microenvironment.