UKRI-BBSRC/FAPESP Grant Award
£1M UKRI-BBSRC/FAPESP Grant Award to Alan Stewart: A “speciomic” toolkit to investigate fatty acid-mediated changes in plasma zinc speciation and their physiological effects
Dr Alan Stewart has been awarded £978,876 from the BBSRC to fund a new bilateral project entitled “A “speciomic” toolkit to investigate fatty acid-mediated changes in plasma zinc speciation and their physiological effects”. The work will be a collaboration between researchers at the Universities of St Andrews, Warwick in the UK and Campinas in Brazil. The project, which Dr Stewart will lead, has been awarded additional funding from FAPESP (The São Paulo Research Foundation) to support the work in Brazil. As part of this study, state-of-the-art and bespoke analytical methods will be employed to understand the (re)distribution of zinc within plasma in the presence of high concentrations of fatty acids, mirroring conditions observed in disease states. The impact of this dynamic on physiological processes including insulin signalling and cellular zinc uptake will also be examined. Prof Claudia Blindauer will oversee work at the University of Warwick and Profs Marco Arruda and Carlos Ramos the research at University of Campinas.
