Manawatū News
Nessha Wise and her team have been running lab experience sessions for groups of high school students doing chemistry. In August she welcomed 35 students and their teachers from Hastings Girls High School, and 30 students and their teachers from St Peter’s College in Palmerston North.
Congratulations to PhD student Elnaz Jangodaz who is a finalist in the Three Minute Thesis Competition at Massey. The competition challenges students to describe their research and its significance in three minutes. Elnaz will speak about her contribution to developing a sustainable future for NZ by synthesising new materials for carbon capture. Elnaz is supervised by Shane Telfer and Richard Haverkamp.
The second Nucleic Acid Chemical Biology symposium in Aotearoa-New Zealand took place on 5 June 2024 in the Marsden lecture theatre on the Manawatū campus of Massey University. More than 70 participants from research institutions and industry in New Zealand attended.
A highlight was the presentations by three international speakers. Professor Katherine Seley-Radtke from University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA was the first speaker of the day. She introduced the audience to modern antiviral drugs based on DNA building blocks, called nucleosides, and presented flex-nucleosides that have extra flexibility in the nucleobase as a strategic approach to broad-spectrum antiviral therapeutics. Emeritus Professor Sue Fletcher from Murdoch University, Perth, Australia introduced the classification of rare diseases from the perspective of different countries and described a journey that took 19 years from the initial concept to approval of the first antisense therapeutic for Duchene muscular dystrophy. The last session was opened by Associate Professor Rakesh Veedu from Murdoch University, Perth, Australia who presented novel thiomorpholino oligonucleotides as a robust next generation platform for spice switching antisense therapies.
The audience also enjoyed another 16 inspiring talks delivered by experts in nucleic acid research. The talks covered topics ranging from biophysics, physical chemistry and organic chemistry to protein biochemistry, cell biology and genetics. The scientific discussions continued during a dinner served at the Wharerata function centre located at Massey University.
The symposium organisers, Professor Vyacheslav V. Filichev, Dr Tracy Hale, Emeritus Professor Geoffery B. Jameson and Dr Elena Harjes, would like to thank the Manawatu branch of NZIC, the Maurice Wilkins Centre for Molecular Biodiscovery, the RNA Platform, Massey Ventures, SynGenis (Perth) and the School of Food Technology and Natural Sciences at Massey University for their financial support. They were grateful for the administrative support provided by Justine Hearfield, Brian Hewson and Laura Chapman at Massey. They would also like to thank Raoul Solomon for designing the logo for their symposium.
