The models will be for use in drug discovery and testing, and could contribute to reducing the number of animal studies carried out.
“We hope this collaboration will enable us to develop highly reproducible central nervous system tissue models, and make them available to academic groups and pharma companies for research and drug screening,” said Dr James Phillips, Lecturer in Health Sciences at The Open University.
Dr Rosemary Drake of TAP Biosystems said: "Such models could contribute to generating more accurate data from novel therapies, and may even result in a reduction of the numbers of animal studies necessary for screening potential neuroprotective therapies.”
Dr James Phillips is part of a group of OU life science researchers who are trying to understand how to repair damage to peripheral nerves and the spinal cord. Here him talk about his work and find out more about life sciences and biomedical research at the OU here.
Comments
From the SES: The new style OUSA Conference was a great success and the Policy Statements were all ratified so, apart from some tweaking to the grammar, SES policies remain. Also, and more importantly, the Dean of Science confirmed that the OU will not be introducing courses using animals, but I will be writing to her for confirmation!
NB: The SES chair is also chair of the Societies Standing Committee.
This platform group is a bit moribund. It started off as a good idea but there have been no postings for over a year. It was intended to replace a Life Sciences Society. The Life Sciences Society was a good idea originally and it would have succeeded if it had had more and more regular face to face meetings and they had been better attended. But this could only have happened if those involved in the society were not current students and had the free time and the willingness to get involved. Those involved were amateurs and some were not even in life sciences. The Society did rather little to speak up for Life Sciences within OUSA and never had a full committee or even a significant membership.
Peter.