Publications | Diamond News Autumn 2009

Diamond News Autumn 2009

First BBSRC Diamond Fellowship is awarded

Prof. So Iwata, Director of the Membrane Protein Laboratory at Diamond
Prof. So Iwata, Director of the Membrane Protein Laboratory at Diamond
So Iwata, a professor at Imperial College London and director of the Membrane Protein Laboratory (MPL), has been awarded the first ever Diamond Fellowship of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

The Diamond Professorial Fellowship of approximately £2 million has been awarded to Prof. Iwata for a five-year project to study the structure and behaviour of ‘transporter’ proteins embedded in the oily membranes that coat the cells in our bodies. These particular proteins are responsible for the uptake and release of various substances – including sugars, amino acids, drugs and minerals – into or out of the cell. As such, they play crucial roles in many important biological functions, and are important potential targets for new drugs to treat a large number of diseases.

Prof. Iwata will use the BBSRC fellowship funding to set up a new laboratory in the Research Complex on site where he and his team will prepare membrane proteins for analysis at Diamond.

“These transporter proteins are the gateway to our cells, so they’re massively important, but very little is known about them, or how exactly they work. Our aim is to solve the structure of some of these proteins in order to improve our basic understanding of life at the molecular level. Additionally, if we can unravel the secrets of these proteins’ functions, then drug developers could use this knowledge to design new small molecule drugs that target and inhibit one of these individual proteins, without interfering with others nearby, thus reducing patient side effects.”

Prof So Iwata, Diamond Light Source

The idea behind the new Diamond Fellowship is to support research that harnesses synchrotron radiation to answer questions in the life sciences.

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