Maintaining and mending minds

Replacing dying nerve cells in our brains could become a future therapy for neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington’s and Parkinson’s disease. Trying to get the cells to survive the transplantation process is tricky. We thought we had the answer many times over, but as this talk will highlight, success is always around the next corner. I will describe the work I have been involved with for the last 10 years on trying to improve the survival of cells after they have been transplanted to the brain. 

Throughout history humans have possessed an often bewildering capacity for harmful recreational drug use. Recent years have seen a rise of new psychoactive substances with addictive and toxicological potential. The Welsh Emerging Drugs and Identification of New Substances (WEDINOS; wedinos.org) group was set up to provide accurate, timely and rigorous scientific information on the nature of these substances prevalent in Wales. The talk will focus on progress made in substance identification and discuss strategies for countering this emerging threat to public health.