Fishing for answers to DBA DR BETH PAYNE
Who am I? Haematology Consultant at University College London Hospital/Research at UCL CI
Why am I here Trained in Haematology in Glasgow and London 2006 went to Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA Became interested in studying DBA
Researching what goes wrong in DBA – WHAT DO WE KNOW? Red blood cells die prematurely
Researching what goes wrong in DBA – WHAT DO WE KNOW? Mistakes or absence one copy of a group of genes These genes code for ribosomal proteins US National library of Medicine
Researching what goes wrong in DBA – WHAT WOULD WE LIKE TO KNOW? Since ribosomes are needed in all cells, why does DBA only cause problems with red blood cells? Can we use research to help us find new treatments ?
How to answer our questions? Patients and their families are the greatest teachers Some experiments cannot be done on patients so we need to learn more using other laboratory models
Zebrafish
Why do we use zebrafish? RO Karlstrom and DA Kane A flipbook of zebrafish embryogenesis Development (1996) 123:461
Why do we use zebrafish? 2mm
Why do we use zebrafish?
Zebrafish Embryo stained for Haemoglobin at 4 days
Effects of Leucine in DBA zebrafish
Growth of DBA zebrafish with leucine
Ongoing projects – using DBA zebrafish to find new drugs for DBA Assess candidate compounds in primary cells Use Red fluorescent DBA zebrafish
Acknowledgements UCL Maria Virgilio Greg Pietka Youngrock Joung Tariq Enver Steve Wilson David Linch St Marys/Imperial College Josu De La Fuente DFCI/Harvard Medical School USA Tom Look Evisa Gjini Ujwal Pyati Hong Sun Arati Khanna-Gupta Nancy Berliner Anu Narla Ben Ebert DBA Patients and families!!!