NEUROLOGY
Post-mortem RNA sequencing revolutionizes neurological research CNS disorders are often seen as the greatest area of unmet medical need, and are characterized by changes or degeneration in specific subsets of neurons and other cell types in the brain. Pharmaceutical start-up Cerevance is using a new sequencing method to study specific cell types from post-mortem brain tissue, helping the company to understand the pathology of these conditions in more detail than previously possible.
Cerevance was established in 2016 as an
and Cell Engineering at Cerevance,
individual neuronal cell types from
independent spin-out of global
explained: “A huge proportion of people
post-mortem human brain samples, so
pharmaceutical company Takeda. The
end up suffering from CNS diseases, and
that we can understand their role in
company is headquartered in Boston,
there are limited therapies on the market
different disorders. This method enables
US, but R&D takes place at its UK facility
that address the majority of them.”
us to work with thousands of isolated
on the Cambridge Science Park, and is
nuclei at a time, providing a deep
focused on neurological conditions such
“We use a novel technology – Nuclear
sequence that is a much higher
as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s
Enriched Transcript Sort Sequencing
resolution than single cell or single
and some psychiatric disorders. Steve
(NETSseq™), developed in the
nucleus sequencing, and allowing
Sheardown, Head of Molecular Biology
Rockefeller Institute – to sequence
detailed transcriptomic profiling of
The Molecular Biology and Cell Engineering team (left to right): Steve Sheardown, Daniel Barker, Samuel Russell, Clare Bender and Jason Lawrence
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TECAN JOURNAL 1/2019