Departmental Resesarch Highlighted by BBSRC

The BBRSC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council) have today highlighted research performed at Plymouth on their website. The research conducted by Matt Baron in the group of Prof Awadhesh Jha describes the culture of "spheroids" of liver cells from Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). These clusters of cells are a much better model for ecotoxicological studies than the classic cell culture monolayers as they more closely mimic a structured organ. They are also stable in culture for at least a month allowing chronic treatments to be investigated.

Spheroid under EM

'Towards a more representative in vitro method for fish ecotoxicology: morphological and biochemical characterisation of three-dimensional spheroidal hepatocytes' Matthew G. Baron, Wendy M. Purcell, Simon K. Jackson, Stewart F. Owen and Awadhesh N. Jha (2012) Ecotoxicology In Press (full text available from within the University but may need a subscription from outside)

The Biomed Blog is born!

Welcome to the Plymouth University Biomedical Science Group Blog!

We hope to use this blog to give interested readers, from both within the university and outside, an insight into what we do and to publish news and events about our activities.

We are also open to suggestions from readers about the type of material they would like to see.