Presidential address

On 14 December 2023 Joanne Harvey gave the Presidential address to the Wellington NZIC Branch. Joanne spoke about recent research from her group in drug discovery and natural product synthesis. She also reflected on the past and present state of NZIC. This was followed by the Wellington Branch AGM. 

2024 Wellington Branch NZIC committee

We welcome new and returning members to the Wellington Branch NZIC committee. Thanks to Luke Liu for his service as Branch Chair in 2023. Farah Lamiable-Oulaidi and James Wood from the Ferrier Institute will step into this role as co-Chairs for 2024. Also serving on the committee are Amy Foster as Branch Secretary, Ralf Schwoerer as Branch Treasurer, Robin Fulton as Delegate to the Council, Emma Dangerfield as Branch Editor, we well as Luke Liu and Joanna Dowle. Andrea O’reilly, Antonio Salamat, George Smith and Lara Browne will be serving as student representatives.

Wellington Branch - Ferrier Institute

Congratulations to Gary Evans from the Ferrier Research Institute who alongside Kjesten Wiig of the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research has been appointed Co-Director of the RNA Technology Development Platform.

Congratulations also to Lawrence Harris and Gavin Painter from Ferrier for leading successful Fast Start grant applications to the RNA Technology Development Platform. Lawrence will be leading a project to develop capability in the production and sustainable supply of nucleotide reagents for mRNA production, while Gavin will lead two projects; one aimed at developing best practice mRNA purification and analytical protocols, and the other developing novel ionisable lipids for freeze-dried mRNA-lipid nanoparticle formulations.

Congratulations to Olga Zubkova, Sam Spijkers-Shaw and Rory Devlin of Ferrier on their recent publication in Angewandte Chemie with collaborators at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Wellington and the University of Canterbury and University of Sydney. They report the synthesis of BODIPY-, biotin- and ¹⁹F-labelled dendritic heparan sulfate mimetics and their use in investigating heparan sulfate mimetic interactions in the contexts of cancer and multiple sclerosis. Sam, who recently completed his PhD studies at Ferrier and Rory, a former post-doctoral research fellow at Ferrier are joint first authors on the paper. They have since started postdoctoral research positions at Northeastern University and North Carolina State University respectively.

Professor Tom Meek of Texas A & M university has arrived at the Ferrier Research Institute and will be visiting until June on sabbatical. Professor Meek is an enzymologist with a focus on the elucidation of the chemical mechanisms of enzymes involved in infectious disease and subsequent rational design of drugs to inhibit or inactivate these enzymes. While visiting Ferrier, he will be drawing on his early career training as a synthetic chemist to prepare candidate inhibitors for ongoing projects in his group.

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The 2024 Ferrier Lecture was delivered by Professor Robert Field, Director of the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Manchester. The public lecture entitled “Sugars, viruses and teeth whitener: taking chemistry from the ivory tower to the real world” was held on 29 February at Rutherford House, Pipitea Campus with refreshments beforehand. Professor Field also delivered a seminar at the Alan MacDiarmid Centre, Gracefield on 1 March, entitled “Identifying and exploiting enzymes for carbohydrate chemistry”. For more information, visit here.

At the end of November, staff and students of the Ferrier Research Institute ran an exhibit at the TechStep Hutt Valley outreach event at the Whirinaki Whare Taonga Arts Centre in Upper Hutt. The event brought together Year 10 rangatahi and teachers from the Hutt Valley to engage with STEM educators and businesses. Students were particularly fascinated with the critical CO₂ extraction of limonene from orange peel and the “blue bottle” oscillating methylene blue reaction with glucose and oxygen.