Aberdeen scientists awarded major research grant
DOCTORS in Aberdeen have been awarded a grant of £60,000 from leading medical research charity the Arthritis Research Campaign which will keep them at the forefront of work into diseases that affect bones and joints.
The grant will enable a team, led by Dr Michael Rogers in the department of medicine and therapeutics at the University of Aberdeen, to use new state-of-the-art equipment to detect accurate amounts of protein DNA from bone and bone cells.
Two of the most common of the rheumatic diseases, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis, involve changes in the kinds of proteins that are produced in the cells present in bone.
"We are able to grow some of these bone cells in the laboratory, and analyse the type of proteins that are produced by the cells," explained Dr Rogers.
"We are also able to study the genes that are responsible for producing the proteins, and examine the changes in the cells that lead to the disease itself. All these studies involve labelling gene fragments and proteins with a radioactive or fluorescent tag, which can then be used to measure how much of the fragment or protein is present."
The sophisticated, highly sensitive equipment funded by the ARC will enable the team to measure these tags.
"This means we will stay at the forefront of research into the molecular processes involved in bone and joint disease," added DR Rogers.
The ARC raised almost £23m entirely from public donations over the past 12 months. It funds research throughout Scotland, in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee, as well as Aberdeen.
