Eve Stalker, a PhD student in the Willis Lab, and Dr Miriam Cipullo, a Postdoctoral Fellow joint between AstraZeneca and the MacFarlane Lab at the MRC Toxicology Unit were awarded prizes at the joint BTS-BPS Meeting ‘Toxicology in a New Era of Pharmacology’. The one-day conference brought together experts across pharmacology and toxicology to discuss how to improve the safety and efficacy of new therapies. 

Eve Stalker was awarded first place prize for her talk on understanding how biological factors, such as the epigenome, may drive damage to the DNA associated with cas9-mediated gene therapy. This therapy is based on the revolutionary CRISPR/cas9 technology that allows regions of DNA to be edited so that disease causing regions can be removed. In response to her award Eve said “I was really pleased to receive this award when all of the talks were presented so well and such a high quality of science.” 

Dr Miriam Cipullo was awarded runner-up for her talk entitled: ‘Deciphering upstream molecular mechanisms of cell death pathways implicated in ASO-mediated liver toxicity’. Antisense oligonucleotides (ASO) are another nucleic acid based therapy that can target disease causing RNA. They are especially useful for rare diseases such as Huntington’s disease, where a single gene is involved. However, ASO therapies are only used in some diseases as they can accumulate in the liver and cause unwanted side-effects.

On reflecting on the conference Eve said “I thought the conference was really interesting, it's important to start thinking about safety earlier on in pharmaceutical development to prevent the attrition of medicines later in the clinic. I was really interested to see how previous learnings from small molecules are informing clinical trials for more complex biological like cell therapy.”

Congratulations to Eve and Miriam on their prizes! We look forward to sharing more about our research at the 2025 BTS Annual Congress which will be held in Liverpool from the 2nd to 4th April 2025.