
Alumni Ari Sudwarts and Alistair Brock launch Nutrition-Tech Start-up
6 Sept 2018Alumni Ari Sudwarts and Alistair Brock launch Nutrition-Tech Start-up called Shoreditch-son in Okinawa, Japan.
We develop behavioural assays to identify genetic mechanisms in health and disease
We undertake CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology to generate null mutant zebrafish lines
We study endophenotypes associated with neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders
We use transgenic lines and perform staining to relate neural activity and network formation to behaviour
Alumni Ari Sudwarts and Alistair Brock launch Nutrition-Tech Start-up called Shoreditch-son in Okinawa, Japan.
The Numerosity Group visited collaborators, Giorgio Vallortigara, Andrea Messina and Davide Potrich at the Mind Brain Institute, University of Trente, Italy. A very productive visit but with time for team building.
We have developed a three-choice test to assess impulsivity in zebrafish
The need to discover and develop safe and effective new medicines is
greatest for disorders of the brain. According to the World Health
Organisation, CNS disorders will be the greatest medical need of this
Century as no CNS disorder is currently treated adequately and the
number of people in the world with CNS disease is set to increase
sharply in the decades ahead.
Compared to other therapeutic areas, it
takes longer to get a CNS drug to clinical settings, and the
probability of getting there is lower. There are a number of
contributing factors including the staggering complexity of the human
brain, which means our knowledge all CNS disorders is largely
incomplete, and the cost and difficulty in testing new compounds for
effectiveness and safety.
In order to reduce costs and facilitate development of effective therapeutics,
new means of assessing brain effects and safety of novel compounds are urgently
sought by the pharmaceutical industry. In recent years zebrafish have been
found to be a useful species in which to screen for genes and compounds
affecting human disease conditions as they share many developmental and
disease causing processes.
Zebrafish can contribute to the discovery process by helping to
identify genes and processes underlying disease conditions as well as
providing a system in which to test for drug effectiveness and safety.
Although zebrafish can not replace the use of other animal species
entirely, they provide a simple, cost effective system for first round
trials and have the potential to increase the rate at which compounds
can be brought to market.