bioscience underpinning human health. That is where Babraham science is focused. Unless

we understand the basic bioscience which underpins human health then we will not be in a position

to be able to understand what goes wrong in human disease.

So Babraham's research is split into three major themes. Firstly, there is the cellular

signalling grouping, secondly the immunology grouping and thirdly epigenetics and chromatin.

In the signalling programme we are understanding how acute responsiveness occurs, for instance,

in the way in which a body deals with infections. That leads into the immunology where understanding

how the immune system develops, how it changes during aging for example, whereas within epigenetics

and chromatin we are looking firstly at developing organisms and secondly at how the body has

adapted to changes in its environment.

Epigenetic modification or changes to the DNA and the chromatin in the nucleus which

make the genome experience the environment in a particular way and talk to the genome

and make it function, make the organism function in a particular way. Imagine that there is

about 200 or 300 different cells in the human body that all have their own unique epigenetic

information and epigenome, as we call it, which is uniquely characteristic of each cell

type. So there is liver cells which have a particular epigenome, there is brain cells

which have another type of epigenome and the epigenome, in essence, instructs the genome

to only use a particular subset of all the genes that it has in order to confer identity,

be it a liver cell, be it a brain cell on the particular cells in the body.

For example, we know that colleagues here at the Institute have discovered that that

a particular class of genes that are epigenetically regulated controls the amount of fat that

the body acquires during development and after birth and later on and so it is possible that

this type of epigenetic regulation underlies the develop of obesity for example later in

life and perhaps alter diabetes.

Dr Michael Wakelam, Director of Babraham Institute Babraham has a number of technologies which

facilitates it work. Firstly, there are mass spectrometry methodologies which allow us

here not to just look at proteins as in many places but also at lipids which are critically

important in signalling processes in cells. Secondly, we have specialised systems such

as phosphorescence activated cell sorters...

...which allow us to isolate particular populations of cells, for instance, immune cells for study.

Babraham is at the forefront of epigenetics research in Europe. It is one of the largest

centres that carries out this type of research and the technology we have been able to develop

here and build up through investments by BBSRC, MRC and also the University of Cambridge has

really put us at the forefront of this kind of epigenomics field worldwide.

Our imagine facility has a number of microscopes. Particularly the confocal microscopes can

be used to identify the localisation within a cell of various proteins on genes. This

technology has been developed further recently to allow the examination of these cells under

live conditions. This means we can look at the movement of proteins for instance within

a cell when it has been stimulated. A good example of this is a neutrophil which is responding

to an infection.

We can look at the movement of signalling proteins within these cells in response to

the infection and see how that changes in the presence of various pharmacological inhibitors,

therefore, allowing us to investigate the disease processes.

Links with companies is extremely important for Babraham science. That is because, whilst

the research has its own intrinsic importance, at the end of the day it has to have a benefit

for society.

We have a number of links with the companies in our incubators on site of which there are

32 at present. Some of these are spin-outs from Babraham science, others have chosen

to locate here where they can, amongst other things, interact with and collaborate with

the Babraham scientists.

Crescendo is a new biotech company established at the beginning of 2009 aiming to make new

antibody based therapeutics.

The advantages of antibodies as therapeutic agents are that they are highly specific and

they don't have the unpredictable side effects of small molecule drugs. At Crescendo we are

trying to develop antibody based fragment therapeutics...

...which have those advantages but also the advantages of small molecules, in other words,

topical delivery, no need for injection.

The science that is the basis for Crescendo has been occurring over about 10 years here

at Babraham and it has been pioneered by Drs Marianne Brugerman and Mike Towsick. The advantages

of being based at Babraham are that we are living a very rich scientific environment

and we are constantly tapping into the scientific expertise of the Institute. There are about

20 or 30 other companies based at Babraham and that makes it an exciting environment

to be in.