Principal speaker
Associate Professor Kaylene Simpson
Other speakers
Ms Moana Simpson
Menzies Health Institute Queensland
Understanding Chronic Conditions Program Seminar
Topic 1: Personalised Medicine in Health - Host: Professor Nigel McMillan
Abstracts -
Assoc Prof Kaylene Simpson - Enabling discovery and driving translational medicine with high throughput technologies
Rather than continuing to study a lot about a small number of genes, the VCFG enables researchers across Australia to perform large-scale, unbiased, discovery-based screens using CRISPR, RNAi and compound screening strategies. Screens can be viral-based pooled approaches, or single gene per well format using synthetic agents and high throughput liquid handling automation to deliver agents at a genome-scale. The screens themselves are always unique, complex and highly informative, and in many cases focus on understanding at a very detailed level cellular phenotypes through high content imaging. The VCFG is also the only place in Australia to offer Reverse Phase Protein Arrays, essentially a high throughput 'western blot' system whereby protein lysates are spotted onto specialised glass chips and protein expression quantitated using antibody-based detection. A very rapid and highly sensitive method to measure expression in a large number of samples simultaneously. These methodologies will be discussed in the context of screens that have been performed in the VCFG and other potential applications.
Ms Moana Simpson - Drug Discovery Compound and Natural Product Logistics
As medical researchers develop new assays that can lead to the emergence of breakthrough medicines, they must be able to swiftly access and use the compounds needed for development. Compounds Australia, located at Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery (GRIDD), is the premier compound management facility in the Southern Hemisphere. The facility presently provides complete compound management for a national compound collection of >750,000 compounds. All compounds are stored under rigorous conditions to maintain compound integrity. Compounds Australia prepares >6,000 assay-ready microplates each year with precision, accuracy and full data tracking and routinely coordinates the transport of microplates to national and worldwide destinations. Also, the Compounds Australia Structure Portal (CASPeR), launched in 2016, enables researchers to browse or search the "Open' Compound Collections via a web portal for access of up-to-date information including individual chemical properties. The academic compounds are made openly available to research members worldwide, offering a unique chemically diverse collection that is not commercially available.
Biographies -
Assoc Prof Kaylene Simpson established the Victorian Centre for Functional Genomics at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in 2008 following a senior postdoc period at Harvard Medical School where she pioneered a high throughput, high content RNAi screening approach. Trained as a cell biologist within the breast cancer field, she now engages with researchers all over Australia to help deliver complex screening and imaging strategies to enable new target discovery.
Ms Moana Simpson is the Manager of Compounds Australia, and has over 18 years' experience in providing support for drug discovery research within Australia and the UK, both in academia and in the pharmaceutical industry. Ms Simpson was instrumental in the initial development and subsequent growth of Compounds Australia from its inception to now a fully operational and busy compound management facility. She has an invaluable combination of skills to contribute to specialist compound management; including high end laboratory automation, high throughput screening and a thorough knowledge of drug discovery principles and practices. Ms Simpson holds a Bachelor of Science with Honours and a Graduate Diploma in Project Management; her expertise is primarily in the areas of chemistry and biochemistry.
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Seminar Flyer -
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Event categories
RSVP
RSVP on or before Tuesday 13 February 2018 , by email uccmenzieshiq@griffith.edu.au , or by phone (07) 5678 0907