Travel story: Martin Donnelley

Martin Donnelley from the Robinson Research Institute travelled to the University of North Carolina for a lab tour and to Pennsylvania to meet with Spirovant at the North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference

This is what Martin had to say about their experience:

What was a highlight of the travel?

Being back at a real conference again, rather than looking at a screen.

Please provide details on any researchers or collaborators of significance that you met at the conference/lab visit and why they are important to your work?

I was invited to attend a three-hour meeting with gene therapy scientists from Spirovant and University of Iowa. This involved productive discussions about the challenges associated with lentiviral (LV) gene therapy for CF. I presented data we have generated about using physical perturbation of airway surfaces for enhancing gene transfer, as well as magnetic guidance approaches using magnetic nanoparticles. Hopefully this will lead to enhanced collaboration with both groups.

At the NACFC conference I met with the major LV gene therapy researchers, Maria Limberis, Ashely Cooney, and Uta Griesenbach, who represent the other main laboratories working in the same space as my team. I also had a productive meeting with Marcus Mall a clinician-researcher from Charite in Berlin. He has agreed to provide B-ENaC mice for our MRFF XV imaging grant in 2023.

List labs or research facilities you visited. Please provide a brief summary including how these visits will be useful to your work and/or career development?

We had a lab visit to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill prior to the NACFC meeting. This involved an invited seminar presentation followed by 30min-1hour discussions with individual researchers. This has already enhanced our collaborations, with planned experiments at the SPring-8 synchrotron in Japan to perform in vivo mucus rheology assessments using our magnetic particle imaging technology.

I had meetings with: Barb Grub, Brian Button, David Hill, Ric Boucher, Larry Ostrowski, Silvia Kreda, Rob Tarran, Scott Randell, Ray Pickles, Alessandra Livraghi, Wanda O’Neal

How will the experience support you and your research going forward?

The meetings that I had have already enhanced collaborations, and opened up new avenues of research. It was also great to be able to reconnect with people I haven’t seen since 2019 (or earlier).