Podcast – UKDRI Connectome Conference Highlights

Voice Over:

The Dementia Researcher Podcast, talking careers, research, conference highlights, and so much more.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Hello and welcome to special podcast recording highlights of the UK Dementia Research Institute Annual Connectome Conference.

 

Hello, I'm Dr. Anna Mallach and I'm from the UK Dementia Research Institute Centre at Imperial. I look into the role of support cells and how they can contribute to Parkinson's and the progression of this disease. For those of you who don't know, Connectome is the UK DRI's annual conference, which means that at the end of every year or towards the end of every year, over 600 UK DRI members from across the institutes are coming together every year in a different city across the UK to talk science and meet up. It provides a very important opportunity to connect with colleagues from other centres, other locations, and today we're giving you some insights into what was presented over those three days that happened last week. Before jump into the highlights, let's meet our guests. Tom?

Tom Adam:

Hi. Yeah. My name is Tom. I'm a researcher from Imperial College with the CR&T Centre, the Care Research and Technology Centre. I'm with Paul Freemont's lab. I have a background in engineering, and the rest of the team are all synthetic biologists. We are developing a device which detects for urinary tract infections for people who are with dementia. It's a home testing device that we're trying to provide to those so that we can mitigate the need for symptom recognition and enable home testing for quick detection.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Interesting. Beth?

Dr Beth Eyre:

Hi, I am Beth. I am a postdoc at the University of Edinburgh. I've really just recently joined. My supervisor, Susanne van Veluw, moved from Boston to Edinburgh, and we're part of the new British Heart Foundation Cardiovascular Dementia Research Centre. I think that's right, ARCHA. I'm working on a disease called cerebral amyloid angiopathy, which is where amyloid protein gets deposited around blood vessels within the brain. So, I do lots of cool research into that.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Finally, Dayne.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Hi, I'm Dayne Beccano-Kelly. I'm a group leader here at the Dementia Research Institute. Specifically, the geographical location of this one is at Cardiff University. I work on synaptic dysfunction in Parkinson's as a way of identifying early therapeutics and how this may shift and change over time to identify the basically the most efficacious therapeutic strategies we can do at each phase of the disorder.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Amazing. So now that we've met the guests, for those who haven't heard one of our conference podcasts before, this is how it works. So, we will each take turns discussing an interesting talk or poster that they attended at the conference that really made an impression in whatever way. We'll loop around a couple of times, so you really get a sense of the broad things that happen at the conference. So, Beth, let's begin with you. What stood out for you at the conference?

Dr Beth Eyre:

there's a couple of things. So, because it was my first Connectome, I was just really surprised by the size of it. I think I didn't realise the scale of the UK Dementia Research Institute and the vast amount of science that everyone studies. I'm a blood vessel person, so it's really easy for me to just stay in my blood vessel field. So, it was really nice to learn more about the genetics and things like that that people study. So that was just my first little thing.

But for me, the main things that really stood out at this conference, and I feel a bit bad for saying it first, is all the lived experience sessions. I think it was really fantastic how the start of the conference of the first day, we had the lived experience conversation with, I guess, Rory Cellan-Jones, who's one of the hosts of the Movers and Shakers podcast, and then he talked about his own experiences with Parkinson's disease. He asked questions to some scientists on stage. From that, he talked about the importance of communicating with people living with Parkinson's disease and communicating during those clinical trials, and especially the importance of using the correct language, like making our complex science make sense to people. I think that's something really important that all researchers have to focus on when talking about our work and the focus on when there would be treatments, keeping hope but not over-promising. I thought they were just some really lovely take home messages from that conversation.

Then still going on about the lived experience sessions, I really also enjoyed how the conference ended with another fantastic lived experience session. It was totally different to the first one. In this one, Charles Sabine, who represents the Hidden No More Foundation, presented a really moving talk. He narrated his own experiences with Huntington's. You saw videos from his career, and he talked about his family and the hope that was now here with the new gene therapy trial that we've also talked about, which I'm sure somebody will talk about in this podcast, but they were just particular for me.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Yeah. I think particularly with this mirroring of having Sarah Tabrizi give the science talk just before about the therapies, and then I think that was timed incredibly. Then having Charles talk right immediately after, not as a scientist and coming at this from a very personal and such different angle, I think that was incredible because I think as scientists, we want to develop these cures and I think we're often so siloed in our little science boxes that it was a beautiful reminder as to what we're working for.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

I also thought that Rory Cellan-Jones' section was fantastic. He had come here to Cardiff previously and we met with him individually. He just was so sharp and was great at translating the science into very good and effective audio bytes rather than it just sounding cool. They were actually accurate, which sometimes may not happen when we're translating data to the media and the main screen. So, I also really liked that, Beth. I thought it was really good.

Tom Adam:

Yeah, I really liked his talk as well. I think it's just always so compelling seeing the people that are actually affected and hearing, getting to engage in them and have meaningful discussions, and like you said, just not being lost in your day-to-day research and seeing actually where we're going with our work.

Dr Anna Mallach:

For sure. I think reflecting on maybe previous Connectome conferences, I thought this one was amazing that it had this focus on the lived experiences. So, in a way, that was one of the feedbacks that I gave this, maybe we should keep this up. All right. Tom, what was one of your highlights?

Tom Adam:

Yes. I mean, Connectome's always a bit of a funny one for me because I'm from an engineering background. Obviously, it's very focused on neuroscience and it can be quite challenging, but in the same breath, there's so much to learn on that basis and it just highlights how multidisciplinary the whole thing is, but I really liked... It was one of the first talks, it was Malcolm MacLeod, and he's a professor of neurology and translational neuroscience at Edinburgh. I mean, for anyone who saw it, he's super entertaining, very funny. His focus was much more on how researchers actually conduct themselves and how to really push for good quality research. While that sounds quite obvious, it's just not really discussed that much for early career research as I've found. A lot of the emphasis is on pushing for papers and getting into good journals and things like that.

He actually spoke in one of our centre meetings a few months ago. Yeah. Just again, the same thing, really thought-provoking, really makes you think about the quality of your own research, very introspective. Yeah, just talking about how personal biases of researchers can really steer your research and how to avoid those from creeping in. So yeah, I always quite like his talk. It made me feel very reflective.

Dr Anna Mallach:

That was during the early career and technologies day, wasn't it? For people who don't know, that's the day we have before Connectome, so in this case, on Monday for the early career researchers and technologists, which again, I think is a wonderful opportunity to bring everyone together and maybe without the scary group leaders.

Dr Beth Eyre:

Yeah, I agree with Tom. I think Malcolm's talk was fantastic, super engaging. I think I heard so many people talking about it afterwards. Like you say, it's just something that is definitely needs to be talked about, but it's quite hard to talk about and it's hard to talk about in a really engaging manner that people don't feel... He just explained it in such a great way, and it wasn't just, like you say, about going in these top-tier papers. It was about having integrity and doing the best research you can. I think to hear it back from someone so high up and so esteemed is really helpful for any early career researcher.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

You both just mentioned it there as well, which is that there were quite a few neurologists or practising  neurologists that are also doing research, and that from my team and others that I've spoken to about it seems to have come across that it was that one of the best things about this particular Connectome was that there seemed to be really a good breadth from basic science, as we term it, all the way through to, again, you just said the patient engagement as well or the people with dementia engagement and then neurologists. It just felt like there was a really good balance this year so you could see how it can move from one phase to the other. That's been said a number of times, at least here at Cardiff DRI, but you guys have just mentioned it as well. So, I think that's been particularly good as well. I'm glad they were so engaging and that you guys found it engaging as well as myself and everybody else. It was really good. It was really good.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Amazing. So now that you're already talking about what you really enjoyed, Dayne, what was one of your personal highlights?

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

I thought all the plenary speakers were really good. So, it's not to say that anyone in particular was better than the others because I actually, from personal perspective, really liked Erin Schuman's talk because it worked on synapses. I'm not sure. Can we classify Sarah's as being a plenary talk? It wasn't specifically [inaudible 00:11:28], but she just rushed back from her BNA Award ceremony, and so I feel like it had quite a lot of billing leading up to that, and that was also really good.

But I thought Christian Haass's talk was fantastic. I thought it was really good. It was quite refreshing because he himself, I think by his own admission was like, "I'm coming towards the end of my career now." He just came out and was just like, "I don't think microglia the initiator of Alzheimer's disease." He caught almost a sharp intake of breath from some people in the audience, and I was a bit like, "Okay. This is going to be a good one," because I've seen him give talks before and he's always really good. But yeah, I thought it was quite nice to maybe start off with what could be perceived as a controversial statement perhaps to someone in the crowd, but then back it up with all of the evidence that he's had over time.

Not only was the work really good and talking about the fine balance that's required between microbial control within the brain and whether or not it's attacking aggregation of amyloid beta or whether or not it's maintaining the balance or whether it's caused detriment or keeping everything in check was there as well, but he also gave really insightful snippets as to how to manage the career. I don't know if anybody else picked up that he was talking about interactions with pharma and industry and the best connections he's ever had and maybe huge pitfalls that he'd interacted with and the things that to do and perhaps not to do.

He interspaced it really well with the idea that microglia may not be the initiator but may well be a driver and modulator of the disease process and affecting penetrance and affecting the manifestation. So, I just thought it was just a really wonderfully well-balanced talk in giving both insight into career, as well as insight into the disease state. I fanboyed a little bit and was just like, "Man, I hope I can be that cool when I'm getting to the end of my career because it was really good." I was like, "Yeah." So, I was like, "Yeah." I thought it was fantastic and just really, really well delivered and the science in it was so well executed, as you would expect from Christian Haass as well.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Yeah. But in a way, I had the similar feeling because I feel like I've worked on TREM2, I was quite familiar with the science, and so what I found really interesting was how he approached his career and not just science for the sake of doing science but also thinking about it strategically and his shift towards the microglia. He was like, "I have 10 years left and then we decided to look at the microglia," and you're like, "It's the art of doing science, as well as doing science."

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Yes. Doing it well and having a clear understanding of... He did it so methodically as well. Possibly, it seems like that the way he presented it and in hindsight, but from my impression of his work throughout his career, it does seem like he built the fundamentals up and then found something and then expounded upon that and then found that. It was just so well-built. So yeah, I'm not going to start fanboy again, but it was really good. It was really good. So, I thought it was great. So that's one of my highlights. It's not to say that Erin and Sarah's work wasn't beautifully well presented as well. It just struck me personally from my personal point of view that it was just such a beautiful balance in the talk. So, it's good. I thought that was really great.

Dr Beth Eyre:

I think it was also super accessible. I know a little bit about TREM2, but I'm definitely not an expert in TREM2. I think the way his graphics on the slides, the way he built up that information, I think it probably allowed people who didn't really know much about microglia and TREM2 to actually access some of that information because it can be quite hard when you're at these conferences and if it's not your research realm. We're all quite niche. I think when it's presented that way, it is just more achievable for everyone to understand the concepts of it.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think in similar vein, one of my conference highlights was actually Erin Schuman's keynote on the synapses because I'm not a synapse person. I'm starting to dabble in it, but she just started out her talk with this beautiful rotating image of just in neuro-

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

The cycle.

Dr Anna Mallach:

... and all of the projections and it was so... Even as a neuroscientist, just seeing that visual. She went very deep into the structure and whatnot. So, my team have been fangirling, boying over that for a really long time now. They all have to try and force them not to do any structural EM now because they were like, "Yeah, structure." I was like, "Oh, God, no, there are many steps we have to take before we can get a school as Erin. Please, people."

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Yeah, it's going to take several years of dedicated work. I know that my PhD student wanted to go and talk to this. Erin, if you're watching this, we'd love to collaborate with you. I don't know if that was just a shameless shout-out. My PhD student tried to find you directly after this and we couldn't find you. But yeah, the work was great. I agree. It was really great. Yeah, it was great.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Again, really accessible because by the end, all of the real nitty-gritty of the findings and the ribosomal changes at synapses, I think that could have immediately gone over my head, and yet she slowly built it up that by the time she got to that point, you're like, "Oh, of course. That makes sense."

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

"Yeah, I know this."

Dr Anna Mallach:

Yeah, exactly. Well, this doesn't feel like a breach anymore to say, of course, within 10 minutes neurons or ribosomes, the synapse becomes so stressed that they shut down. By the end, you were like, "Yes, now I can go read the papers and maybe understand slightly more." Then she also highlighted the website that they had on the synaptic RNA versus the cellular RNA, and I think that just as a nudge to data sharing and making data available and accessible in a way that everyday scientists are interested who don't necessarily have a background in bioinformatics can access it, I thought that was just one of the many things that I really enjoyed about her talk.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Very good. Really good.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Right. So, we've done the first round of highlights. I think we're going to go around again. So back to you, Beth.

Dr Beth Eyre:

Yeah. I think there was obviously just so many really cool, exciting talks, but I have to highlight the... We had a whole session on introducing the British Heart Foundation, UK Dementia Research Institute Centre for Vascular Dementia Research. That's the correct... When you move somewhere new and you have to learn all these new acronyms. I loved that session because it's a new centre. It's not a specific place. The idea is it's the whole institute as well. We've not done it on geographics. So, there's people from Oxford. There are people from Edinburgh. Where else?

Dr Anna Mallach:

UCL, right?

Dr Beth Eyre:

UCL, there we go. So, it's really nice. This was a great talk, great session. We learned about oligodendrocytes, CAA. We learned about brain energy supply and blood-brain barrier models, in vitro models. I think it was a really nice way to sort of introduce the centre to everyone and give an idea of the work that some of these scientists do and then hope for collaborations from people because a couple of these scientists are new to the field. So, my supervisor, Susanne van Veluw, she's moved to the DRI. We have new TARs who's at Oxford. We have Rikesh Rajani who's at Edinburgh. And then we have Catherine Hall who's at UCL and also at the University of Sussex. So, I think it's just a really nice... This is headed by Dave Attwell, who's at UCL. I think it was just a really lovely introduction to something that I'm really passionate about, which is blood vessels. I love blood vessels.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Love it. I love it. I love it. Really good.

Tom Adam:

Yeah. One of my highlights as well was specifically Catherine Hall's talk. I thought it was just very interesting talking about the oxygen supply and how that affects the brain and memory. I think from my background, she managed to explain it very well and I was able to follow through a lot of it. But yeah, just interesting how subtle reductions in oxygen, and therefore energy to the brain just have a real impact on memory and how this can show up very early for the disease and more obvious symptoms. But I found that quite interesting. It clicked for me that it links with some of the work that's actually done in our own centre by Derk-Jan. He focuses a lot on sleep. I don't know if you guys saw his talk as well, but he's spoken before about sleep apnoea and how that obviously has big reductions in oxygen while you sleep and obviously affects the energy supplies of the brain, but just interesting thinking about those two separate indicators that they both can just lead to memory problems specifically.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Definitely. I think this is why, for example, the new Centre for Vascular Research is such a good addition to the DRI because I think we have a lot of DRI researchers who dabble on the edges of vascular dementia research. So, it's really nice to say we have this concrete centre now with our four dedicated group leaders, but we also obviously have a lot of other group leaders in the DRI who are doing a bit of research on that and just giving them the bigger space now to collaborate and do something. So, I thought definitely with our centre here at Imperial, there was a lot of discussion afterwards of collaborations, maybe even with Susanne specifically and doing a range of those different things. So, I think it's a nice addition to the DRI, and I think we'll add a lot more than just four group leaders and David Attwell, I guess, five group leaders.

Dr Beth Eyre:

Yeah, I agree. There are already so many people who do blood vessel research, endothelial cell research, astrocyte sort of research who have done amazing work on that already. I think you're so right, just the addition of the centre, I think it's just nice for everyone who is interested in blood vessels. Like you say, people who are on the cusp of it, I think it's really nice to... We need so much more research in that area, so it's really nice that there is the funding for this new centre.

Dr Anna Mallach:

All right. So, I guess, Tom, you just talked about your highlights. So, we're back to you, Dayne, another highlight.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

So I think it's a bit weird, the breaks were really good, but specifically, and I say this in jest, but also I'm serious because we just, again, briefly touched on it, it's really nice to sit down and have conversations with your peers, with next generation of scientists, and actually come up with some new ideas and really spit ball them based on X talk you've just seen that stimulated ideas and has led you to maybe continue the conversation as you're coming out of the auditorium and then sitting down and really shooting it out and really starting to come to a conclusion that you possibly could work on something together.

I had a really good chat with a few people from this, including Marco Brancaccio, and hopefully we're going to do some new innovative work together. It's all come from just sitting down and working through some of the ideas and really trying to hash out, "Could we actually do this? What would we need first? Is there preliminary data we can gather? Does this serve both our needs? Yes, no, maybe. Can we really work this through?" So yeah, I've really valued that ability to have the period of time where you can sit down and really sort of chew the fat around the science, especially when you did have talks like Christian's who was being a bit controversial about something or had said a controversial statement.

So, it drove the conversation, the discussion that you could have and really generated that ability to have really raw chats about data, which can be really stimulating. So, I do sincerely mean it, although it does sound funny, that the breaks were really useful in between all of those to really sit down. I think there was the ability to do that. There was that room way at the back that have tables that people suddenly found when we were trying to eat dinners and lunch, but it was that we found ourselves in there and chatting away a few times. So that was really, really powerful.

I'd say another thing, sorry, just that was really good, I know it's general, but in the area where we had the poster sessions was the table. For instance, the dementia researcher section was really good for me to volunteer, voluntold some of my students and postdocs to go and chat about their science and get it out there because I think that the fact that we do have so many outlets for showcasing the work via different platforms, YouTube Shorts, audios, podcasts, et cetera, it's really powerful for getting our data, but also exposure of the ECRs data sets. I think that's really important personally.

I pushed forward Gloria Cimaglia and my postdoc and Shikha Kataria and Shahzabe Mukhtar to put their either audio or minute shorts. Those are already up online on LinkedIn and YouTube and talking about their data and metabolism, Parkinson's, and also looking at lysosomal dysfunction. Being able to showcase it in different styles, shorts, audio where you're answering questions gives access to what we're doing because I'm really a big proponent of demystifying the science that we do because I don't think it serves anything to keep it sort of, "Oh, you can't know about this. We're just doing science things. You don't need to look behind the curtain idea."

It's much better to just be out there with all the information for various reasons, but not least of which because we are doing this for the populace, and so they should know what we're doing. So, I think having all that data out there in these different mediums is really useful, and so it was really nice to have that opportunity in those spaces as well. So, I really love that.

Dr Anna Mallach:

That's good. I think talking about the ECRs or slightly more ECRs, one of my highlights, now that we've talked about the keynotes, was actually the parallel session. So, I thought it was so nice that for a couple of moments at the conference, we could break up into two smaller groups, which also meant that for at least the session that I was hosting on data and digital, which means we moved into the room upstairs. So, it wasn't the big scary auditorium. It was a smaller contained group and then listened to maybe more the ECRs talk. I thought that was really powerful as well to hear from the people leading the research and doing the research, what they were doing. One highlight for me was Malta Kolanka, who is from David Sharp's lab at the Tech Research, Care Research and Tech... CR&T.

Tom Adam:

CR&T.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Yeah, we've already defined it, so you can use the-

Dr Anna Mallach:

Acronym.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

... acronym. Yeah.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Centre at Imperial who's working on something very different to what we are doing, but using early detection systems, in this case, a sleep mat to be able to predict respiratory infections in people living with dementia, living at home, and to really enable with that, feeding this to the NHS and enabling people to stay in their homes for longer. I thought that was just a really nice... Just such a different approach but using data for common good. We had a lot of discussion about it afterwards in terms of data analysis and training, something that sounds very scary, AI systems, but how can that best be done and what use do they have and how do we actually do science? So, I thought her talk was a really good jumping off point to maybe have other discussions as well. So yeah, that was one of my highlights. Sure. If you do parallel sessions, you can showcase double the amount of talent in a way mathematically. So yeah, I think we'll do one last bit around about highlights. So, Beth, final comments?

Dr Beth Eyre:

More comments. So, I was genuinely very impressed by all of the flash talks. I think sometimes you can go to a conference and they say flash talks. They said it was one minute and I thought, "How can anyone describe what they've been doing in one minute?" Because one minute is really short. I've been to them where three minutes and I'm like, "Okay. Three minutes, it's a good amount of time," but one minute and I thought, "How are they going to do this?" Every single person explained their work in such a succinct manner. It was clear. It was concise. They were engaging. There were a couple of little like, "Ooh, come and see my post-review and actually know what we're doing." But I just think all of the researchers did such a good job of that and I think it's the best flash talks I've ever seen at a conference.

I was really, really impressed, and then it made me want to go to some of the posters. I saw somebody who was reaching Gaia Brezzo from the University of Edinburgh, in the same institute as me, but you don't always know what people are doing. I really loved the project that they were working on, so I then went and spoke to them about it, some of the models that they've been using. I found that was a really good starting point to chat with people about their work. So, the flash talks were done fantastically.

Tom Adam:

Yeah, they were really good. Did you see the one done by Abs that was... He took a bit of a different approach where he asked the questions to the crowd. I think he just worked that format very well rather than squeezing the PHC or whatever into 60 seconds. It was just perfect.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

It stocked in there. Yeah.

Dr Anna Mallach:

[inaudible 00:30:24].

Tom Adam:

It did. It was really good. It was really good. Yeah. I mean-

Dr Anna Mallach:

So, for people who didn't see it, do you want to just briefly say what Abs did and maybe where he's from?

Tom Adam:

Yeah. So, Abs, this is slightly biassed, he's also from CR&T, but he basically asked a question of how many people in the rooms think that EEG could cause accelerated ageing? People put their hands up, and then he asked about different factors and gradually the hands went down, but some people still thought that they might affect it. Then he was like, "Well, you guys don't need to come to my poster, but everyone else, come along." It was just perfect, I thought, but also a really impressive bit of work from him and looking at how these EEG signals can predict accelerated ageing and just super... 15-year-long dataset, it's just very compelling data and a bit different.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

It did stick in the mind. It was such an interesting approach to it. It was brilliant. Yeah.

Dr Anna Mallach:

And very efficient. Part of ethics is very much very different than any other flash talk but hit it on the nose and all within 60 seconds. I was the timekeeper for that flash talk session and I have to say, I was really worried they would run overboard. We were very strict with them. Not a single one. A lot of them, I think because I scared them a bit too much, stuck to 30 seconds. I was like, "No." I was like, "You can talk a bit more."

Tom Adam:

Yeah. Yeah, you really embedded a lot of fear, I think, in those.

Dr Anna Mallach:

I did. Oh God, we don't need to have this on the air. Okay. Dayne, one of your highlights.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Sorry. Okay. Sorry, I'll try and swiftly leave it on. I apologise. That's funny. One of the other talks, so again, I thought those parallel sessions were brilliant, but one of those from one of the parallel sessions was one of the first parallel sessions, the exchange auditorium was specifically Amanda Heslegrave-

Dr Anna Mallach:

Yes, from the-

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

... who was talking about the Biomarkers Factory. Yeah. Her style and delivery are brilliant. She just seemed relaxed and knowledgeable at the same time, which was a brilliant mix for the platform that she's trying to push forward, the Biomarker Factory platform, which we have access to, which allows us to interrogate different systems with different biofluids, et cetera, that we can look for different markers in. But because she's so knowledgeable and laid back, you feel like it's an approachable thing for you. She showcased the work. She showcased the abilities. She also highlighted some of the current caveats that were there but delivered it with what we can talk about how we would build this up and how this might work for your particular samples and how we might push forward with that and the current strengths, maybe where the gaps in their particular datasets are currently.

So, I just think overall, whilst again showcasing the capabilities, and like I said, the caveats, I feel like a lot of people might have been inspired by what is possible and also have felt the ability to be able to go, "Right. Well, I can just go up to her and chat to her about what we can do moving forward." That can only be good for a platform that's supposed to be utilised by all of the different teams across the DRI. So, I just think it's really good. I'm a big fan of the work that she and Henrik Zetterberg are doing at the Biomarker Factory. I think the delivery of that was spot on, so it was really good.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Oh, that's good because I think it's one of those weird things when you have platforms and researchers and you somehow want the platforms to be very accessible and yet... So, I think it's a definitely a tough sale she was trying to do there.

I had another highlight from actually the same session that's something that my team came back, and we just did a highlight session in the lab meeting yesterday and they all really enjoyed Zana's talk from UCL. So, she's leading or she's co-leading the... Or she's involved with the human tissue hub that the DRI is now setting up in combination with Colin, Colin who's up at Edinburgh and Suzana's done at UCL. I think she gave a really interesting talk coming from the pathologist background of these other different aggregates. She showcased the digital pathology they're doing and their most recent pre-print of scanning in a lot of archival brain tissue and analysing that. I thought that was something that inspired my ECRs and the team a lot. We've been having long and hard discussions about how we do neuropathology and how best to approach it. So that was great to get inspired students.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Good. Inspirational. I love it.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Inspirational, yes, exactly, which is, I guess, ultimately the entire point of Connectome.

So, before we close, let's zoom out a little. What do you think were the hot areas of discovery? What was the big takeaway? In your own research areas, to maybe bring it down a bit more, what do you see as the next big challenge? Where are we moving towards?

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Can I start?

Dr Anna Mallach:

You want to go? Yes, go for it.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

I'll keep it brief and then we can hear from there. I'll just give you time. I think like I said before, I and a lot of other people that I spoke to really liked the breadth of going from basic science to drug discovery even, or testing of drugs, to hearing from individuals with dementia. So I think one of the things, the big things that came over to me was the idea of translation and translational science, and even to a degree, although maybe to a degree is applied science, so the idea of trying to get our work out from bench to bedside, so trying to see what we can do with the research that we're doing. It just came over well as to as to not have any one stage of that have too much emphasis.

So, you can see how basic science can be translated to identifying the best targets and the best way to then stratify those targets and the best way to identify the best therapeutics for those targets and then execute it. Perhaps we obviously need more of that execution part, but for me, the way that it was styled, it was a doable, visible thing. I suppose the block to that at the moment, or one of the blocks at the moment in, for instance, Parkinson's research is the idea of when you would test those things. So, we currently have the ability to identify individuals to a fairly good positive degree once they have the actual manifestation of the disorder, but quite often perhaps we're working on model systems that predate that, that are the precursors for that. So, translation of our drug is perhaps not working in when we do take it to clinic because it's at a different stage of the disorder.

So, I think getting biomarkers and ways of identifying, again, let's take Parkinson's earlier, is going to only help us to translate because perhaps we can work towards using different identified therapeutics and tools at different phases, really trying to stratify it into different start parts of the disorder. But yeah, for me, translation is one of the things that really, we're strongly coming across, and that's the next thing is to work out how we get much more of the work that we're all doing to clinic to actually help the individuals.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Good point. Beth?

Tom Adam:

Yeah.

Dr Beth Eyre:

Yeah. No, I second that completely. One of the things that I really took from the conference, and I think probably because the last session ended talking about a clinical trial was how do we get to a clinical trial and how would that work? What's the best way to have the clinical trials and how do we get the most out of them? Obviously, Sarah Tabrizi's talk, talking about going from discovery and all of that and basic science work to the actual gene therapy clinical trial, and that leads on to in my area of research in cerebral amyloid angiopathy. There's actually the first clinical trial happening for CAA called the cAPPricorn trial and it's for both individuals with Dutch-type CAA, which is a familial version, so genetic, and then also sporadic CAA. I mean, it's like an RNA therapeutic to reduce the production of the protein that produces amyloid within the brain, and then which obviously goes to the vessels.

So, this is super exciting because in this study that they'll be using, they'll be extracting CSF and looking at species of amyloid within there. I think it's a really exciting time for the CAA field specifically. I think it really hits on these hot areas of discovery and how you can go from basic research up to clinical trials.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Sure. Tom, what do you see as the next big challenge or opportunity?

Tom Adam:

Well, I guess for me, I think the emphasis around lived experience, participants coming to the Connectome, I think it's the inclusion of people with lived experience in designing, particularly in my work where I'm trying to design a home testing device and actually really considering the co-design process and how to make people's thoughts feel validated and listened to and really help that drive, I guess, the design and development of my device, but then see how that affects the progress being made in these projects, and then I guess how that then translates into commercialising these things so that they do get to bedside. Yeah, that was my big takeaway and the theme of the whole conference. I really felt that.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Yeah. No, I think I agree, and I think that was, I guess, ultimately the intent of the conference and I think it was executed beautifully in that way. So yeah, even for the fundamental research, just not basic fundamental research is the big plus.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Yeah, that's a better word. Thank you.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Oh, you're welcome.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

I prefer that. I prefer it.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Just when you say-

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

Foundational.

Dr Anna Mallach:

Foundational. Yeah, because I'm like, "I do basic science," it sounds just a bit muff.

Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly:

I always think it hits the ear wrong as well. Yeah.

Dr Anna Mallach:

All right. Well, I think that wraps things up for today's episode. Huge thanks to everyone at the UK DRI for putting together such a brilliant event. I think we've been definitely highlighted some of the highlights. Of course, thank you to our great guests, Beth, Dayne, and Tom for joining me today and sharing such insightful reflections. See you next time, but for now, I'm Anna Mallach, and thank you very much for listening.

Voice Over:

The Dementia Researcher Podcast was brought to you by University College London with generous funding from the UK National Institute for Health Research, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society, Alzheimer's Association, and Race Against Dementia. Please subscribe, leave us a review, and register on our website for full access to all our great resources, dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.