Funding to boost scientific links with Japan

Professor Austin Smith, Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research, has received a Japan Partnering Award from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). This scheme provides funding for BBSRC-supported researchers to build and foster long-term collaborations with Japanese partners.

The award will enable Professor Smith and colleagues in Cambridge to collaborate closely with Dr Hitoshi Niwa and other researchers at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan. The project also involves Dr Paul Bertone, a biocomputational expert at the European Bioinformatics Institute near Cambridge, and Dr Kathryn Lilley, Director of the Cambridge Centre for Proteomics.

The collaborative effort is tackling an emerging area of research: the systems biology of stem cells. Systems biology integrates complex information about whole biological systems to understand how they function. Like stem cell biology, it has been a fast-growing research field over the past decade.

‘Only recently has it been realistic to start bridging the two approaches in order to answer questions about the behaviour and decision-making pathways of stem cells,’ explained Professor Smith. ‘It’s an exciting but challenging area, and it makes very good sense for researchers in Cambridge and Japan to share complementary experience, tools and resources.’

Commenting on the awards, which have been made to four research groups in the UK, Professor Douglas Kell, BBSRC Chief Executive, said: ‘Modern bioscience demands international collaboration. By working together across international borders we can generate faster progress and higher quality science than we can alone.’

For more information, please contact Professor Austin Smith (austin.smith@cscr.cam.ac.uk). Professor Smith was recently awarded the prestigious 2010 Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine for his contributions to stem cell research.