Author: eilis

At the most recent NECTAR Board Meeting at the NECTAR2018 meeting in Paris, NECTAR welcomed its new President Dr Agnete Kirkeby from Copenhagen University. We also welcomed three new NECTAR Board members, Dr Romina Aron-Badin from CEA Paris, Dr Stefano Pluchino from the University of Cambridge and Dr Rebecca Matsas from Hellenic Pasteur Institute. Welcome everyone and wishing you the very best in your new role Agnete!

We are delighted to let you know that several articles for the European Journal of Neuroscience, NECTAR and the Cure Parkinson’s Trust Special Issue dedicated to Tom Isaacs have now been published (online ahead of print) and many more are in various stages of review. Those published include:

The Campaign for Alzheimer’s Research in Europe (CARE) has offered to sponsor travel bursaries for UK or Irish students or postdocs to attend the 2018 NECTAR meeting, to be held 6-7 December 2018 in Paris.

Applications will be competitive and are open to PhD students and post-docs (but not salaried faculty) from any NECTAR member laboratories within the UK and Ireland, and will be for a max of £350 (UK) or €400 (Ireland) each. The applicant must submit an abstract for a data-blitz or invited oral presentation at the meeting. The subject may be in any area of neurorestoration or transplantation for neurodegenerative disease, although applications that focus on Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are particularly welcomed.

Applications should be submitted by email to alzheimerscare1@outlook.com and comprise the following attachments:

1. a 1-page CV;
2. a copy of the abstract;
3. a statement of estimated costs claimed, which may cover, travel, registration and accommodation, along with a declaration that these costs cannot be met from any other source;
4. a supporting letter from the head of laboratory.

The deadline for applications is 12 noon GMT Monday 5 November (following closure of the abstract and early registration deadline), and CARE will seek to notify decisions within 7 days following.

We are delighted to announce that the incoming NECTAR President is Dr Agnete Kirkeby from the University of Copenhagen. Dr Kirekeby will take over the role at the NECTAR2018 meeting in Paris in December. Congratulations to Agnete and we wish her the very best in her new role!

Agnete performed part her graduate research project partly at the pharmaceutical company H. Lundbeck and partly with the field pioneer Lorenz Studer at the Sloan Kettering Institute (New York). In 2009 she went on to perform her postdoc in the group of Malin Parmar at Lund University (Sweden) where she over the years built up a unique expertise in using human pluripotent stem cells for production of subtype-specific neural cells and developing protocols for accurate patterning of neural cells towards different regional fates (Kirkeby et al., Cell Reports 2012). This work has led to the development of a promising stem cell treatment for Parkinson’s Disease (PD) (Grealish et al., Cell Stem Cell 2014, Grealish et al. Stem Cell Reports 2015), which is currently in translation to the clinic in collaboration with Prof. Malin Parmar and Prof. Roger Barker (Kirkeby et al., Cell Stem Cell 2017, Nolbrant et al., Nature Protocols 2017, Kirkeby et al., Prog. Brain Research 2017). Agnete started her own group in 2015 at Lund University and has built up her own line of research by combining stem cell patterning protocols with microfluidic techniques to produce in vitro 3D models of the human developing brain. Based on a junior group leader start-up package from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Biology (DanStem), she moved her group to the University of Copenhagen in the beginning of 2017.

Registration & Abstract Submission for NECTAR2018 in Paris, France now open. See link below for details!

NECTAR 2018

Welcome to our new and improved NECTAR website. We do hope you enjoy it!

Thanks to Emma Yhnell from Cardiff and Simon Stott from Cambridge for allowing us to feature their vibrant and dynamic Twitter feeds on our NECTAR website.

Emma is a Huntington’s disease researcher who has been actively involved in public engagement initiatives for many years. Simon is a Parkinson’s disease researcher who runs the informative “Science of Parkinson’s” website which provides plain English descriptions of the most up-to-date research being completed in Parkinson’s disease.

If you have a Twitter feed that you would like to see featured on this website, please let the current NECTAR President (Eilís Dowd) know.

The Inaugural Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Association for Neural Transplantation and Repair (APANTR) will be held in Melbourne, Australia on 1st June 2018.

The European Journal of Neuroscience, NECTAR and the Cure Parkinson’s Trust will publish an EJN Special Issue dedicated to Tom Isaacs later this year.

Tom was the President and Co-Founder of the Cure Parkinson’s Trust, he was also an enthusiastic supporter of NECTAR, and participated in the conferences in both 2014 (Galway, Ireland) and 2015 (Lund, Sweden).

The 2017 conference (Dublin, Ireland) was dedicated to Tom in which we played a special tribute entitled “Tom Isaacs: In His Own Words” by BBC documentary producer Jemima Harrison as well as David Sangster’s “A Perfect Day” tribute.

Tom’s obituary was published in The Times on Wednesday July 5th 2017, and his life was featured in BBC Radio 4’s Last Word show on Friday 14th July 2017.

Rest in peace Tom – you are sadly missed by all of us in the NECTAR community.