Institute in the Park is a Partner Charity. We have supported their research into childhood illnesses since 2016 and have now made six grants totalling nearly £90,000. Our latest grant was made in July 2024 to purchase a plate washer. The research into health and diseases often goes under the radar with progress appearing to be slow and that is why long term commitments are key.
Professor Christian Hedrich sent us this update.
“At the Institute in the Park one of the paediatric diseases we are interested in is IgA Vasculitis, which in 40% of cases translates into a condition called IgA Vasculitis nephritis where inflammation in the kidney leads to a reduction in kidney function. In 2% of cases these children require kidney replacement therapy in the form of dialysis and eventual transplantation.
To help research this we use a range of equipment that has been bought and most recently we have been able to purchase a plate washer. This piece of equipment allows us to wash 96 samples at once with identical conditions compared to a scientist manually washing the samples which can lead to variations in volume, force and surface area covered. This allows us to be much more precise and reproducible with our research and make even better use of precious samples from children.
Dr Joe Brown shown loading our new plate washer while he analyses samples from children with IgA Vasculitis to better understand the causes and hopefully help find new targets that medicine can be directed towards.
The plate washer is one of a number of pieces of equipment that have been funded by the Foundation. In 2023, we were able to purchase a new -80 degrees Celsius freezer which is used to store all of our samples while we collect enough to do our experiments. This one freezer will allow use to store 60,000 samples where they are securely stored ensuring we can make the absolute most out of the precious samples donated by sick children.
In 2022 we purchased a PCR machine which allows us to analyse micro-RNA molecules which are none coding so they don’t produce proteins but help regulate the expression of genes that do produce proteins. They can either upregulate or down regulate genes which may then lead to more or less of specific proteins being made by the body. There is a new area of interest for us with Dr Joe Brown a new post doc in the group who just competed his PhD from the Univresity of Liverpool investigating microRNAs in liver disease, he is now transferring these skills to the Institute in the Park labs and paediatric kidney disease.”
It is vital that these pieces of research equipment, which are not funded by the public sector, are available to the research teams at Institute in the Park. The Foundation is focused on supporting this work in the years to come.