Pioneering disease research gets major investment boost

University of Leeds has received a grant of £1.1million to enable world leading research into disease.

The grant, which has been awarded by the Wolfson Foundation, will be used to fund high-resolution microscopes which use fluorescent dyes to see into cells in exquisite detail.

This new equipment will enable scientists to understand the structure of molecules in cells and tissues, and how they behave in the early and later stages of disease.

Housed in the Cheney Biomedical Accelerator at the University of Leeds, these highly specialised microscopes add to the world-leading research facilities available within the Astbury Biostructure Laboratory, to give a combined capacity that cannot be found at other UK universities.

Together with the expanding imaging facilities at Leeds, which include Electron Microscopy, Bioimaging and a new Focused Ion Beam microscope funded by Peter and Susan Cheney and BBSRC, the funding will enhance the University’s capacity and capability to deliver interdisciplinary structural cell biology projects that bring together fundamental biologists and clinical practitioners to tackle a range of diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

Read the full press release on the Faculty of Biological website.