New award to reveal secrets of single cells

On 15th February Universities and Science Minister Jo Johnson announced £650,000 funding to the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University: February 2016

The cell is one of few natural units in biomedicine. Only by studying isolated cells can scientists understand how a cancer spreads, how liver regenerates and how connections among brain cells form and disappear. On 15th February Universities and Science Minister Jo Johnson announced £650,000 funding to the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University to use cutting-edge technology to study single cells.

This new scientific partnership now allows the two Universities to jointly develop and apply advanced technologies.  Prof Chris Ponting, who led the team that won the Discovery Award, said “We will now be able to understand how thousands of different types of cells emerge in embryos and as we age, how they respond to their different environments and how they go awry, as in cancer. The new technology will reveal the cell’s biological secrets at never-before-seen detail.”