News and Events
IMM 15th Annual Meeting - November 9th 2012
Left to Right Professor Paul Brown, interim head, School of Medicine, TCD, Professor Padraic Fallon, interim Director of the IMM, Provost Dr. Patrick Prendergast and Professor Vinny Cahill, Dean of Research.
The 15th Institute of Molecular Medicine Annual Meeting (IMM) was held on Friday November 9th 2012. The meeting was opened by the Provost of Trinity College, Dr Patrick Prendergast, with a presentation demonstrating the strength and significance of academic research within the School of Medicine, St James’s Hospital and Tallaght Hospital whereby he emphasised the contribution these groups made in raising the profile of TCD as a world class university.
The Interim Head of the School of Medicine, Professor Paul Brown and Dean of Research, Prof Vinny Cahill were joint chair of the opening session thus paving the way for the meeting attendees to hear a group of National and International speakers present outstanding talks on the theme of “Inflammation and Immunity”.
Opening session 1, Professor Padraic Fallon (School of Medicine, TCD and interim Director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine) delivered the 9th Institute of Molecular Medicine Lecture on translational immunology with the interesting title “Translating Inflammation from mice to men” wherein he lauded the high standard of research being carried out by his very committed group of research scientists.
In session 2 on the day with a theme of” Inflammation and Diabetes”, Professor Donal O’Shea from St Vincent’s Hospital Dublin gave an astounding talk on the problems associated with obesity in Ireland today, while Professor Catherine Godson from UCD continued the theme highlighting diabetic kidney disease as a probable consequence of obesity.
Session 3 continuing the inflammation scenario with a title of” Inflammation and Carcinogenesis “Professor John Reynolds (St James's Hospital) outlined his group’s research, revealing new insights linking inflammation and cancer, while Professor Rosemary O’Connor from UCC delivered a stimulating talk on Tyrosine Kinase signalling in tumour suppression, thus concluding the session.
Professor Ken Smith (School of Medicine, University of Cambridge, UK) spoke on recent ground breaking discoveries by his group in the genomics of autoimmunity, a theme also addressed by Professor Mark Little (Tallaght Hospital) as part of session 4. Dr Aideen Long and Dr Ronan O’Toole from the IMM brought the session to a conclusion with a new edition to the annual event, the insertion of an oral presentation session by students from the IMM. Four presentations were selected to reflect research being carried out in the IMM, including two by research fellows, Michelle Coleman and Jennifer Conroy and two given by PhD students, Shane Russell and Susan Heavey. All four candidates gave 5 minute talks with 2 minutes for questions.
Professor Joe Kean, interim head of the School of Medicine and head of TB Immunology Research at the IMM introduced Prof Anne O’Gara FRS (National Institute of Medical Research, London, UK) who gave an enthralling state-of-the-art lecture on tuberculosis research entitled “The immune Response in Tuberculosis: From Mouse Model to Human Disease” concluding a day of awe inspiring talks.
The meeting was very well attended. 220 delegates registered, and numbers attending reached 350 at time points throughout the day.
Finally, each year the IMM Annual Meeting includes a poster competition. IMM PhD/MD students and Post Doctoral Research Fellows are invited to submit an abstract. This year 54 abstracts were chosen and entrants requested to hang posters.
The competition included 5 poster prizes, judged by Professor Frank Giles from NUI Galway and Professor Stephen Gordon from UCD. A further three judges from the Trinity Centre, St. James’s Hospital were selected on the basis of neutrality - Dr. Paul Spiers, Dr. Joe McPartlin and Dr. Anthony Ryan.
The winners were:
1. Roche Diagnostics Medal and 200 euro to overall winner - Dr Eamon Laird – Principal Investigator (PI) Anne Molloy.
2. Weir Medal and 200 euro - First Prize Research Fellow – Dr Eva Bolton – PI Antoinette Perry.
3. Weir Medal and 200 euro – First Prize PhD – Mr Ciaran Crosbie- Staunton - PI Yuri Volkov.
4. Second prize, 100 euro – Research Fellow Section - Dr Seonadh O’Leary – PI Joe Keane.
5. Second Prize, 100 euro – Ms Sarah Furlong – PI Derek Morris.
Full Programme