TheAAIRCharity

Enjoying the summer

Gemma Campbell Harding — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:31:00 +0100

Whilst the weather may not have lived up to expectations this summer, I have found that it has been rather fantastic for me. I have been to two conferences, one within the faculty here at Southampton (which Victor blogged about last month and another important national conference.

At the faculty conference this year I presented my work in poster form. This poster described several months of my work and it was great to be able to show my data to people who were interested in what I have been doing. As well as the poster being up for the day, the presenters also have to stand next to them and answer any questions that people have about the data. There were prizes available for the best presentation and best poster from each school, based on how the data is presented and how people answer the questions about their work, and much to my surprise I won a prize! It was a great honour to be recognised for the work I have been doing, and has really helped to encourage me to present my work more in the future.

After winning the poster prize I was given the opportunity to put in an abstract (a short summary of my work) at the last minute for the British Association for Lung Research national conference, which this year was held in Swansea. My abstract was chosen to be presented as part of aYoung Scientist competition, where I would have to give a 10-minute presentation and answer questions on my work for 5 minutes (trust me its much longer than you think!). Some others from my lab were also given the opportunity to present data, including my supervisor, Professor Donna Davies, and some of the post-doctoral scientists within our lab, Emily Swindle, Cornelia Blume and Julie Cakebread. It was also was the first conference for one of my fellow PhD students, Camelia Molnar. As we applied very last minute I was only given two weeks notice to give my first presentation in front of many of internationally renowned scientists in my field so I was very nervous! I thankfully work in a great group where everyone is very supportive, so I was able to practice my presentation several times before the big day and prepare myself for any difficult questions. When we arrived in Swansea I was very anxious, especially when a computer malfunction at lunch meant that none of my graphs worked properly, but luckily it was all sorted out by the time I gave my presentation. I was the third person presenting out of four in total (the others were fellow PhD students, although they were a year ahead of me, and a medic who was much more experienced at presenting than me), but I have to admit my nerves meant that I was not able to properly concentrate on the others. When I got up on stage, and knew I was the one who knew the most about my work in the room I managed to keep my anxiety at bay. I got though my presentation and was a bit worried about the questions as there were many experts in the room on my specific area (whilst these more experienced scientists know a lot about the general area, they do not know the details of my work), but the questions I was asked were easy for me to answer and were not as hard as some of the questions we had practiced. I was very happy that it went well, and I was able to relax and listen to the other presentations, and was able to find out about many new advances in the asthma field. They said they wouldn't announce the winner of the competition until the conference dinner in the evening so after it has finished for the day we all went to the bar for a drink to celebrate our talks and posters being over, as well as congratulate Emily for having won a prestigious fellowship, which she had found out about earlier in the day. When we were at the meal we had the opportunity to talk to the other scientists and eat some fantastic food. At the end of the meal the head of the BALR, Geoffrey Laurent gave a speech about the work they have been supporting, before introducing Ann Miller (the chairwoman of the BALR) who presented the prizes. There were two prizes, one for the best poster and one for the best presentation in the young scientist competition, and much to my delight I was awarded the latter! I was so surprised, I couldn't believe it, especially as it was my first presentation! This is something that is going to be great for my career after my PhD and the prize also includes funding which can go towards sending me to another conference. I am very grateful to the people and organisations that have supported me with this work, especially my supervisors (Dr Lynn Andrews and Professor Donna Davies), the fellow researchers in the Brooke Laboratories and those who have funded my research, the Medical Research Council and the AAIR charity, without whom I would not have had this opportunity.

PG conference at the SGH – an injection of adrenalin

Victor — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 22:46:00 +0100

On 9th and 10th of June we have all participated at the Medicine and Health Life Sciences Postgraduate conference – MHLS PG conference, for the lovers of acronyms.
This is an annual conference held at the Southampton General Hospital that really represents a very enjoyable event. In fact, it is a great opportunity for all the PhD students that participate, to put our research findings together. This is actually not a mere scholar exercise. This year, it was the second time I took part to it; and both times I have found it very useful indeed. It gave me the chance to take a short break from the train of experiments that were keeping me busy at the moment and realise where I was in my research. In fact, and I believe this is true also for others, in my PhD I often find myself getting more and more focused on a single spot, so to speak zooming more and more on it. I reckon this is absolutely necessary in order to actually progress towards the final goal of my project. Indeed each and every single step that gets you from A to B needs to be carefully carried out! However by doing so, sometimes I loose the vision of the whole. It is really great then, that we have the opportunity to “zoom out” once in a while, which is what this year’s conference allowed me to do. In fact, in order for other people to understand the beautiful spot you are focused on, you first have to tell them the whole story that led you there.
While last year I prepared a poster, this year I have been given the chance to give an oral presentation. This is a very different challenge. It is more stressful if you like, but at the same time it really gives you an injection of adrenalin. It allowed me to really put all the enthusiasm and interest I have for my research project into slides and words, and try to transmit it to the audience. For me, the most interesting aspect of all this, was that I really tried to make almost a little show out of my data, and I was really pleased (and surprised… but don’t tell this to my supervisors) of how nice and appealing the final result was… I really had fun! And I reckon my audience didn’t get bored… well maybe you should ask them about that!
Participating to the PG conference this year really boosted my spirit, and now I am the most excited I have ever been about working on my PhD!

First Conference

Shelley Davis — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:50:00 +0100

I have recently received an e-mail from the European Respiratory Society telling me that the abstract which I submitted in November has been accepted. This is the first abstract that I have put in and to have it accepted is great. I will be presenting a poster there showcasing my work on Sterology. This is especially pleasing as I spent so long doing the work, 6 months.

I have recently been battling with some assays to try to get them to work so that I can tell if a particular gene is present in a larger amount in my treatment group than my controls. My treatment group is a protein restricted group which is being used as a model of mild protein restriction that is seen in the diets of some mothers during pregnancy.

On a less sicentific note I hope everyone is enjoying the sunshine.

Best wishes Shelley

Nominate you fave charity in Sainsburys Hedge End

Gemma Campbell Harding — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:47:00 +0100

Hi!

I have just got back from a conference in San Diego so am rather jet lagged at the moment. I will update you soon on the conference but for now I just wanted to mention something quickly that I saw yesterday.

In Sainsburys in Hedge End they have a box near the entrance for nominating your favourite local charity. If you happen to shop there (or are passing) please consider putting AAIR as you nomination. With the world economic climate the way it is right now, charities need our help more than ever, and if we can persuade a large company to donate some cash then that should really help!

Anyway, just wanted to let you guys know in case you hadn't seen it,

Hope you all enjoyed the bank holiday weekend

Gemx x

World Asthma Day

Gemma Campbell Harding — Tue, 05 May 2009 22:50:00 +0100

For those of you who don't know - it is world asthma day today (5th May). It is also the day that the Sir Henry Wellcome Laboratories were opened at Southampton General Hospital. The Wellcome trust and University have spent close to £10 million refurbishing and relocating all of the research laboratories within our division over the last 8 years or so and today they were officially opened. We had a big opening ceremony and a nice buffet after and all of the division were there.

Though one of the best things about the event was that the AAIR charity were there and had a sign up with the website www.justgiving.com/aair/raisemoney . I had not seen this before so thought I would use my tech savvy nature to try and drum up some support. I have recently started using Twitter (a microblogging service - ie like this but each message can be no more than 140 characters in length) and often see famous people "retweeting" (a tweet is what each blog entry is called so retweeting is when they repeat it on your behalf to get the message out to more people) about other causes such as World Malaria Day. So I thought I would give it a go. Jason Bradbury who is on the gadget show is a big fan of twitter so I sent him a message asking if he could retweet about the address and much to my surprise he did!!! It was very exciting! And it seems to be working as I have now seen many others also reposting the message. Lets hope it will help raise money. I have also sent the same message to a few other celebs on twitter so will have to see if they do too (I may end up bouncing off the walls with excitement if they do - never thought I'd be this star-struck!).

Anyway - I hope that it works as the more money that goes into the research the better - last thing we want is for the credit crunch to slow down the development of new treatments for asthma.

Anyway, I had better go, has been an exhausting day! I will try to update soon. Am off to my first international conference next week (assuming swine flu doesn't affect travel) so will let you know how I get on

xoxo

Writing up my first paper!

Gemma Campbell Harding — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:59:00 +0000

Hello again!,

I thought I would give you a bit more insight into the life of a PhD student.

As well as working on my current project, I have recently also been working with Karl and Ben (who I did my last rotation with) writing up the work that I did with them into a paper. For each of our rotations we had to write a report and this paper has been an improved version of that so it is very exciting thinking that soon my work could be in print! Although I am no longer working in their lab, I am just across the corridor so it is easy to pop over and get everything sorted during a (well, many!) coffee break (and of course it is good to continue to collaborate).

Writing up a paper is quite a slow process as there are three of us working on it, so there were many, many corrections and changes in grammar (literally arguing over commas!) before we were all happy! We have sent it now to Ratko Djukanovic (I have just noticed that there is a link on the AAIR website to a page about Ratko so you can see who I mean!) who is the boss of their lab (as well as the research division) for his approval and comments. He will be able to guide us with regards to which journal he thinks it would be most appropriate for, and of course has the final editorial approval. This is the first time I have written a paper and it has been a very interesting process. I can't get too excited yet because you have to go though many stages of approval before it is published, but I sometimes can't help myself!

In December I was lucky enough to be able to attend the British Thoracic Society conference in London. There were many interesting talks and I was able to meet other researchers in my field. This was especially useful because some of the talks I went to were on EMT (epithelial to mesenchymal transition – the idea is that in the right situation epithelial cells (the ones lining your airways) can change into more structural muscle-like cells) research. This is what the paper is about, so I was able to ask questions to find out exactly what other people in the field are doing at the moment and how their research fits in with ours.

Anyway, I had better get on with some lab work and feed my cells,

Will update you all soon,

Gem XOXO

Hello from the Brooke Labs

Gemma Campbell Harding — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:15:00 +0000

Hello!

It has been a very busy few months up in the Brooke Laboratories. I officially started my PhD project in October and have been working almost non-stop ever since! I am working closely with a research fellow within the lab called Lynn Andrews, who is my main supervisor and so far it is going very well. We had not worked together before, however as part of my undergraduate course in Biochemistry and Pharmacology at Southampton I had lectures from Lynn, and it was these lectures which first made me very interested in asthma research. Each PhD student has at least 2 supervisors and my other one is Professor Donna Davies, who I worked closely with during my MRes year, which means that we already have a good working relationship.

The project I am doing is an extension of one of the rotation projects I did last year, so I have been able to jump straight back into it, and was even able to get an abstract (a short summary of my current work - which you then extend into either a poster or a short presentation at a conference) in for the American Thoracic Society conference which is in San Diego in May. It is extremely unusual to be able to get an abstract done within a month of starting your PhD but because of having the MRes year under my belt I was able to do it (though granted there were many late nights in October!). I have also spent this week putting in more abstracts for a national conference in Loughborough in March. It is very important that I attend conferences and get my research out there as a student as it not only helps me with my career but also so that others know what research is currently being done.

I have really enjoyed starting my 3 year project, especially because it is my project so I can have input in how I do things and which areas I focus on. Because I have a year of full time lab experience and have learnt many new techniques I have been able to make use of this. One of the main things I have been able to bring to the project is my experience using something called a FACS machine. For this you label your protein of interest with a dye and when you run it though the machine it uses lasers to detect the dye and therefore how much of your protein is within a sample (so you can see whether a treatment with a drug for example will change the amount of your protein of interest). This has been very useful because we would like to characterise the cells that I am using and this is a fantastic way of doing that, but not many people in the Brooke Labs use FACS (their work tends to focus on other things) so it would have been much harder to do without this experience.

I hope that you are all having a great 2009

Gem x

Happy new year, 2009

Shelley Davis — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:57:00 +0000

Hello I hope everyone had a good Christmas and new year, I did.

I got the funding that I needed to go on the course to France. It was very interesting and gave me lots of ideas which should help me remove any biased that I many have had in my results. The course was held in La Rochelle which is right by the sea. The gala dinner, which was part of the course, was held in a seafood restaurant. We had oysters, shrimp, langoustine and snails for a starter and then a fillet of local fish on a bed of noodles. It was all very nice, however after fours days of seafood I was really craving chips and steak!

I have stained and pictured three lungs and done some repeat assays on gene expression that was done by Mat, the other PhD student in the lab, before I started. This is the data that I am hoping to have analysed and will be able to include in my 6 month report.

November 2008

Shelley Davis — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 09:58:00 +0000

I have started my project now, cutting and staining lung tissue. This will then be used to work out the total surface area of the lung, the thickness of the airway and alveolar walls and the thickness of the smooth muscle which surrounds the airways. I am looking to see if there are any changes in the lungs following the COPD model when compared with a normal section of lung tissue. To work this out I have to use a grid which looks like an image of the sea with wavy lines across it. It took ages to work out the way to measure the basic tile, or square on the grid with a single section of wave in it, correctly. I am due to go on a course in France later this month which will teach me how to go about the analysis properly.

Work in my main lab has not started yet as we are waiting of a clamp to be fitted to a filter hood so that the RNA and DNA extractions can begin. I am also going to be going on a course here at Southampton University to learn the basics of Western blotting. This technique is used frequently to look at protein levels and I will be using it later on in this project.

Start of my PhD

Shelley Davis — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:59:00 +0100

I have just started my three year project which means that I passed my MRes. I am going to be looking at the effects of maternal diet on the development of lungs. The structure of the lungs will be looked at to find any difference in alveolar (small air sacs) size and wall thickness, as well as the size, wall thickness and the thickness of the surrounding smooth muscle of these airways. I am going to be doing this in one if the labs that I visited during my three ten week rotations over my first year.

The first few weeks have been mainly looking at the way in which we are going to do these measurements. This is essential as it has to follow methods that have already been used in this field to ensure that the work will not be criticised for this if we manage to get any publications from it, which hopefully we will.

I have come back to the human genetics lab that I did my first rotation in and will have the same supervisor, Dr John Holloway. I have two other supervisors, Dr Susan Wilson and Dr Chris Torrens. I am very pleased with my supervisors as they all seem very approachable and prepared to spend time explaining the things that I need to know for this project.

Hopefully I will be able to give a bit more detail about the project when do my next entry in a month or so. Regards Shelley

Last rotation of the year...

Gemma Campbell Harding — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:59:00 +0100

So I have just finished my lab work for my 3rd and final rotation this year and it has gone very well, but now I have to spend two weeks writing the report.
I have been working with two post-doctoral research fellows, Ben Nicholas and Karl Staples. It has been a very different working environment in this lab as both of my supervisors are heavily involved in lab work, which has been great because it means I have more people around to learn from. I have been using completely new techniques for this project, which has not only been useful for my future career in research but also very interesting.
We have been working together on the same research area - seeing if it is possible to make epithelial cells (these are the ones that you can see if you look inside your cheek and a layer of these cells continues down from your mouth into your lungs) which line the lungs into more structural cells (which are found deeper inside the tissue) called mesenchymal cells. This is something that has previously been seen in cancerous tumours and we were keen to know if this is also something that happens in the lung due to disease (in asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease you see an increase in these mesenchymal cells but it is not clear where they come from). We are hoping that some of this work will be published, which I am really looking forward to.
I have found this project and this year as a whole very interesting and we are now in the process of deciding what we will do for our full PhD projects. We will be more involved in the planning of our PhD than most students as we are going to spend August writing up our proposal for what we would like to do. I will tell you more about my PhD project in my next post,

Gem x

New Rotation

Shelley Davis — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 08:43:00 +0000

Having finished my last rotation with Dr John Holloway, I have now started a new one with Dr Donna Davies, Dr Hans Micheal and Dr Susan Wilson. My last project was based a lot on data base searches to find information on my gene of interest. This project is looking at structural changes. This means that I am staining slides. I am working mainly in Dr Susan Wilson's lab with her team. This includes John, Helen, Ron and Jenny. I am really enjoying my time in this new lab and I also have a bit of office space in the Brooke Lab upstairs where I am siting next to Gemma. This is an added bonus as before I did not get a lot of chances to meet up with her as we were both so busy.

Dr John Holloway has recently been promoted to 'reader'. He took all the lab out for lunch and sent me an invitation to join them. We had a lovely time and it was good to meet up with the people in the lab again.

We have begun our next set of journal clubs on the topic of respiratory diseases. I have found these extremely interesting and feel that I now have a better understanding of how patients can be affected by the condition that they have. I am looking forward to learning more in this field and getting a better all round understanding.

I hope everyone has a good easter, I know Gemma will as she is going on holiday, lucky her!

Hi, I am Shelley

Shelley Davis — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:46:00 +0000

Well Christmas was good, it was nice to have some time off and now that I have come back my PCR is working and I can get on and finish my project. There isn’t a lot time left for this project it has gone so fast. I have really enjoyed it although am not too sure if I will feel the same about the 5,000 write up!

The lab is fairly quite at the moment. Matt, another PhD student, has spent most of his christmas writing up the work he has done since September. Nikki has recently moved into the lab. She looks after the DNA bank that is stored here at the uni. Most of the four year medical students are out doing some work experience with local GPs.

My supervisor, John, is busy as always. He is helping me with the plan for my write up at the moment. I should know where I am going to be for my next rotation soon, I am hoping to work on a project that uses the microscopes, but we will see. There is a team building day coming up in February. All four of us will be going as well as the other 4 year students on the Cancer pathway and some of the supervisors are also coming. I am looking forward to it as I have never been on a day like this before.

This Week in the Brooke Laboratories

Gemma Campbell Harding — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:18:00 +0000

Hello! The past week has been a busy one in the Brooke lab, where I am doing my first four month project rotation. We have had three people are move out of the office, two parties and a conference in London, which most of the lab attended! Two of our post-doctoral fellows (postdocs), Ilaria and Jude, have sadly left us. Ilaria (a medical doctor who specialises in allergy) moved back to Italy, and Jude (a PhD doctor) has moved offices as she has just been given a promotion. Jude will still be in collaboration with many of the staff in the lab, and will soon have her own post-doc to look after (with the help of Professor Donna Davies) who will work within our lab. Mark, a doctor who graduated from med school a year and a half ago, has been doing an academic medicine rotation for the past 4 months so that he could find out about doing work in a lab with some “hard-core” scientists, has also moved on to a new rotation in cardiology. The lab is not empty now though! There are still around 15 people working here and it is sure to increase again soon. To say farewell we had a party in the main office last Tuesday during our lunch break, which was a lot of fun, and gave me an opportunity to get to know some of the people I am working with a little better. For the last half of last week however it was quite lonely in the lab as there were only a couple of us around. This was because everyone else had travelled to London for the BTS - the British Thoracic Society conference. This is an event where all the scientists working in the field (everything in general about lungs) from all over the country get together and tell each other what they have discovered through their research. Most of the people within our lab gave presentations (something I am very scared about doing in the future!). These conferences are really important as they help us to easily find out what other people are doing and how this may link to our research. As I am new and have only just started my research it is too early for me to go to these conferences but hopefully I will be able to attend one during my second year. This week has finished off in the way that I am sure many of yours have too - a Christmas Party! Everyone from the Brooke lab attended as well as many other people who work in the South Academic block of the hospital, which covers many different fields of research. The party was a great success and Sue Martin, our lab manager, really did a fantastic job of organising everything, including buying the crackers! For now though it is back to the grindstone as we are all desperately trying to get our experiments finished before the Christmas holidays. Happy Holidays! Gem x

Shelley Davis — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:27:00 +0000

Hi, I am Shelley. I’m 23 and have just completed my undergraduate degree in biochemistry and genetics from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. I live near Southampton which is one of the reasons that I chose to apply for this 4 year studentship.

One of the main things that attracted me to this university was its facilities. The opportunity to work within a hospital, for an institution that has such a good reputation in the area of respiratory medicine is ideal. I am extremely pleased that I managed to win one if the places on this studentship which offers a unique opportunity of a first year which includes rotations within three different labs. As I have no previous experience of the staff or the areas of research that are available this first year will enable me to make an informed decision as to where I will spend the next three years on my PhD. Having to choose a supervisor without getting to know them first would have been a bit daunting. There are four main areas within the studentship, one for each of us. I am hoping to do my PhD around the area of genetics as I find it very interesting.

I would like to thank everyone who supports the AAIR charity and hope that you feel you can get to know us a bit better and discover more about what we are doing, maybe become as interested it in as we are.

Ciao a tutti! (Hello everybody!)

Victor — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 19:42:00 +0000

HI!

My name is Victor Paky Bondanese and I was born in Venezuela in 1979 where my mother’s family moved when she was young, but both my parents are Italian. So soon before I was born they wanted to move in Venezuela where we lived until I was 4, then we moved back to Italy. I am from a city by the Adriatic sea called Termoli where my family still lives. I attended the so called “Liceo Classico” where subjects as Latin, ancient Greek and Philosophy are taught and now and then I used to work as a waiter in weddings (don’t know is you’ve ever been at any Italian wedding… we tend to exaggerate there!), go around the city by rollerskates, swimming and playing volleyball (unfortunately my career in the latter was quite short… just as me ;-)). After high school I decided I had enough of the subjects studied so far and was instead very attracted by Physics, Chemistry and Biology. That’s why now I am a biologist… uhm… really? Still can’t call me that way! I wanted to do the PhD in UK because I’ve always thought it’s an interesting place here and generally because I reckon that things here work better, with a good organization and that universities are widely competitive in the biomedical research. So I left Italy and the university where I was and flew to London after having applied for several PhDs. While in London I tried to improve my English attending a school (but I am still a goat at it, as you can read), worked in a pub and attended a couple of interviews. I am very happy and proud that Southampton University offered me this place. When I came here for the interview, the environment and everybody were great, and it is a very good and renowned research-based University.

Now I am a totally healthy guy, but in fact until the age of 10 I suffered from asthma, which magically disappeared as I grew up, but I still remember those days, and more than me does my mother.

I still don’t have a specific interest in the general molecular biology area. Actually, according to me you need a good burden of knowledge and experience before you could state something like that… I am still an enthusiastic student of everything tickles my curiosity. But it might sound as a strange coincidence that I got involved here, and I am very glad indeed and even more would be me as a child who used to say “I wanna work against asthma”.

Gemma Hello

Gemma Campbell Harding — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:58:00 +0000

Hi! I’m Gem. I am from London originally, but have just finished my degree (BSc Biochemistry and Pharmacology) at Southampton University. I decided to stay on at Southampton and do a PhD here as it is one of the best departments in the world for asthma research which is the subject I am interested in. I was very keen to apply for this four year course as I was not sure which specific area I wanted to focus my PhD on and this course allows me to try out three different areas before I have to decide on one this summer. Outside of the lab, I am involved in the Spitfires, which is the inline and ice hockey team for the university. I am not very good, but since joining the club I have improved my ability to skate (so I no longer fall over every 5 seconds!), and may one day be able to play on the team. I am also a keen traveller, and before starting university I lived and worked in Canada (which is where my family are from) for a year and travelled around America. I have also visited Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Spain and Russia within the last few years (all of which I funded through part-time jobs whilst I was studying). I think that this is a really great opportunity that AAIR have provided us with, and I look forward to writing to you all again soon. Gem x

Claire's Biog

Claire Heath — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 14:54:00 +0000

Hi, I'm Claire,

I'm currently studying for my PhD at Southampton University, where I am based at the General Hospital site. I am part of the respiratory group within the IIR (infection, inflammation and repair) division. My current project is investigating different organisms that cause infections in the lungs.
I am originally from Wolverhampton, near Birmingham, in the West Midlands.
My first degree is in Infection and Immunity from Aston University, and after all that work, I thought I should probably put it to good use and try to do something that would help people in the 'real-world'.

So, here I am!!!

Introduction

TracyNicoll — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 10:19:00 +0000

The blog team are Gemma Campbell, Shelly Davies, Claire Heath and Victor Bondanese. All four have won prestigious studentships in Respiratory Medicine funded jointly by AAIR and the Medical Research Council.