Leeds University Poster Prizes 2017

Andrew Pridmore, Head of Microbiology, visited the University of Leeds Faculty of Biological Sciences on 4th May 2017 to present prizes to undergraduate students on the Microbiology, Medical Microbiology and Microbiology in relation to Medicine BSc degree courses.

These prizes, sponsored by Don Whitley Scientific, are awarded each year for poster presentations of the students’ final year research projects.  These are divided into two categories – laboratory research and literature review.  The winners this year were:

Laboratory-based projects:

1st   –    Samantha Fryer: “Lifestyle Choices of Dietary Supplement Users” (Samantha is pictured top left with Dr Pridmore)

2nd  –    Frank Charlton: “A Pharmacological Approach to Identifying BUNV Entry Mechanisms”

3rd   –    Danielle Beeson: “Mutant calreticulin requires Tyr-626 of the thrombopoietin receptor for oncogenic transformation”

Literature reviews:

1st   –    Katherine Kelleher: “How to create a successful oncolytic agent”

2nd  –    Kurt Rushworth: “Brain Metastases: Mechanisms and Therapeutics”

3rd   –    Hope Denyer: “Old Drugs, New Wheels: reinvigorating natural products against cancer”

All posters were of a very high standard, but Andrew was especially pleased to find several research projects on the subject of antibiotic susceptibility / resistance and some interesting concepts for novel antibacterial therapies.  A selection of these is provided below:

• Adhiron and the antibiotic resistance crisis: a change in direction (Edward Davies)
• Can understanding bacterial immune evasion strategies help to generate novel antivirulence therapeutics? (Rebecca Golenya)
• Immune evasion strategies employed by Pseudomonas aeruginosa as potential drug targets (Marie Horsler)
• BAM: A solution to the antibiotic resistance crisis in Gram-negative bacteria? (Charles Kelleher)
• The emerging role of anti-virulence therapies within antimicrobial resistance (Scarlet-Daisy Prior)

We wish the very best of luck to all of the final year students who are now immersed in their examinations!

To download copies of any of the above papers, please go to this page on our website.