There is increasing interest in developing specific inhibitors to various deubiquitylases (DUBs) which are enzymes that cleave ubiquitin from substrates and are implicated in disease. Much focus has been on one of these DUBs termed ubiquitin-specific protease-7 (USP7) which regulates stability of the p53 tumour suppressor critical for tumour cell survival. Inhibitors of USP7 have the potential to stabilize p53 and other tumour suppressors and therefore inhibit tumour growth.  …more

Tom McWilliams, a postdoc at the MRC PPU has been awarded a prestigious Academy of Finland Research Fellowship. The Academy of Finland is the pre-eminent scientific funding body in Finland, and their highly competitive research fellowship scheme aims to attract and support young investigators with outstanding potential. …more

In 2004 mutations in a little studied kinase called PTEN-induced kinase 1 (PINK1) were identified in patients with early-onset Parkinson’s disease. PINK1 is distinct from other protein kinases due to the presence of three loop insertions within its catalytic domain and a C-terminal region of unknown function. Significant progress has been made on the downstream functions of PINK1 including the discovery that PINK1 can phosphorylate both ubiquitin and the Parkin E3 ligase at a conserved Serine65 residue (Ser65) leading to Parkin activation. However, the mechanism by which PINK1 targets its substrates and how disease mutations affected this process was completely unknown. …more

The MRC PPU was honoured to host Professor Wendell Lim for the 24th Dundee Cell Signalling Lecture.

Wendell is Professor of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at University of California, San Francisco and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) since 2008.

The Dundee Cell Signalling Lecture is the most important one on the MRC-PPU’s calendar.

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Sven Lange, a PhD student working in the labs of Yogesh Kulathu and Philip Cohen, has won third prize for his poster at the joint Dundee-Tokyo Postgraduate Student Research Symposium …more

Congratulations to Dominika Kwasna (Kulathu lab) & Kuan-Chuan (Eric) Pao (Virdee lab) on winning 2 of the 6 poster prizes at this week’s EMBO meeting, Ubiquitin and SUMO: From Molecular Mechanisms to System-wide Responses …more

Congratulations to Karim Labib who has just been awarded a £2 million Research Programme award from Cancer Research UK to study new mechanisms that preserve genome integrity during the final stages of chromosome replication in animal cells. …more

The MRC PPU is excited to announce a new “DUB Profiling Service” that will allow academic and pharmaceutical scientists from around the world to screen for and assess the selectivity and potency of deubiquitylase (DUB) inhibitors. …more

MRC PPU Programme Leader and Consultant Neurologist Miratul Muqit has been awarded the prestigious 2018 Francis Crick Medal and Lecture. …more

Research by Rosalia Fernandez-Alonso, a post-doctoral investigator in Dr. Greg Findlay’s lab in the MRC PPU, will be published in and featured on the cover of the July edition of the journal EMBO Reports. …more