Thursday, April 25th, 2013
In solidarity with biologist Sydney Brenner, a 2002 Nobel prize awardee in Physiology or Medicine, who believes that the experimental animal of the 21st century is man, researchers the world over, have been developing initiatives to bring the concept of translational medicine - 'from bench to bedside' - closer to reality.
Along these lines, the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (InStem), the National Center for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and the University of Edinburgh have recently set up a collaborative Center for Brain Development and Repair, to foster clinical research on brain disorders. The center will be based at inStem and directed by Sumantra Chattarji, with Siddharthan Chandran and Peter Kind from the University of Edinburgh as its Associate Directors. With an initial thrust on Autism Spectrum Disorders/Intellectual Disabilities (ASD/ID), the center will later expand its focus to develop novel therapeutic interventions for other degenerative brain disorders, such as dementia.
Sir John Savill, Vice-principal and Head of the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Edinburgh and Chief Executive of the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) was recently at NCBS, in connection with the collaboration and also to deliver a talk titled '100 years of the MRC'.
