Defeating Disease: The Next Generation

Nanotechnology is thought of as “futuristic science” of tiny machines & science fiction, when the truth is it has been a part of our lives for a (very) long time. It has had huge, positive impacts on healthcare from cancer treatments to vaccines, and is poised to deliver even more in the future. Interestingly, our immune system has ways of “seeing” these tiny particles, which suggests that we have been encountering something similar in the past that our immune system has evolved to respond to. During this talk, Neill will discuss this phenomenon and how we can use it to our advantage.

When infections can't be stopped by antibiotics, what will we do? Will we die from a common Urinary Tract Infection (UTI)? Or could naturally occurring viruses that kill bacteria be the answer? The answer is YES they could! These viruses are called phages, and they have the ability to not only kill bacteria, but to also pressure them into changing in ways that are advantageous to us. With UTIs being the most common bacterial infection in women and also very resistant to antibiotics, it is imperative we develop an alternative to antibiotics, or you just might die from a UTI.....

The common carp is a cold-blooded vertebrate that has 40,000 genes in each cell – roughly double the amount seen in humans! These fish are subject to large temperature variations in the water they live in throughout the year, but how do they survive the winter cold and do their genes have the answer? Join us to learn more about a study which used a technique called gene mapping, to discover what’s happening inside the carp, and how it survives the cold!