Mutations that activate the Leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) protein kinase, predispose to Parkinson’s disease, suggesting that LRRK2 inhibitors might have therapeutic benefit. …more

Adrien Rousseau has opened a new laboratory in the MRC PPU to investigate signalling pathways controlling proteasome homeostasis.

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Ying (Ivonna) Fan and Esther Sammler from the Alessi lab just returned from a visit to Professor Tolosa’s group in Barcelona, Spain where they collected clinical samples from LRRK2 mutation carriers, idiopathic Parkinson’s patients and controls. …more

Many congratulation to Dr Guadalupe Sabio, who was an PhD student with Ana Cuenda in the MRC PPU from 2003-2005, who has just been awarded a highly prestigious and sought after EMBO-YIP award.

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The University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine and the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit (MRC PPU) have launched a new research partnership to enable clinical researchers to visit the MRC PPU for short periods to undertake mechanistic research that may aid their primary research programmes in Cambridge. …more

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

John Rouse, together with researchers Detlev Schindler at the University of Wuerzburg, and Minoru Takata at the University of Kyoto, have won the Fanconi Anemia Research Fund 2017 Discovery Award for the discovery and characterization of the Fanconi anemia gene FANCW.

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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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