Lorna Wilkinson-White wins Award

Lorna Wilkinson-White, a PhD student in Simon Easterbrook-Smith's lab, won a poster prize at the 2007 Lorne Conference on Protein Structure and Function for her poster "Modulation of transthyretin amyloid formation and thyroxine binding by metal ions."

Lorna presented some of her work, which has been focused on characterising the binding of Cu(II) and Zn(II) to wild-type and mutant forms of transthyretin, and studying the effects of these metal ions on amyloid formation from transthyretin.

These studies may contribute to an understanding of three diseases: senile systemic amyloidosis, familial amyloid polyneuropathy and familial amyloid cardiomyopathy, which are causally linked to formation of transthyretin amyloid.