Dr Niall Barron: NICB, DCU (Science Foundation Ireland)

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• published: 28 Sep 2015
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http://nicb.ie/ Dr Niall Barron, of the NICB, explains the use of cells to perform Biotechnological applications and to make modern drugs for the treatment of disease. To contact Niall, or to learn more about his research, please visit http://nicb.ie/team-view/dr-niall-barron/ Video Transcript: My name is Niall Barron. I am a lecturer in the School of Biotechnology in Dublin City University (DCU) and I am also a researcher in the National Institute for Cellular Biotechnology (NICB). My area of research, as the name suggests, is to use cells in order to perform biotechnological applications. More specifically, we look at using cells to produce modern drugs. What do I mean by modern drugs? Well, typically when we think of drugs we think of something simple like aspirin. Aspirin is a very small molecule; it's very simple to make, we're quite good at it, chemists are very good at controlling it and making sure that all the aspirin molecules that come out at the end of their process are all the same, and therefore will perform their function as needed. Modern drugs are proteins, and proteins are much more complicated and difficult to make: it's the equivalent of comparing a bicycle to a jet plane. We can make bicycles quite easily, perhaps in your own garage at home. If you can build something that resembles a bicycle, you'd do very well to produce a jet plane at home. We use cells in order to do that, because chemists can't do it, and the cells that we use to do that are mammalian cell. Originally, these cells were taken from hamsters, back in the 1950s. They're now grown in huge vats, in the same way that Guinness is produced, for example, by yeast. We use these CHO cells, as they're known to produce these protein-based drugs. One of the challenges, again, in terms of these drugs, is they are extremely expensive. Some people will be aware of the famous postcode lottery in England a few years ago, where if you were born in a certain jurisdiction, you wouldn't get access to some of these anti-cancer drugs, for instance. However, if you were born (or lucky enough to be born) in Wales, the government or NHS would provide the money to pay for these drugs. When I talk about cost, what do I mean? A company that recently set up in Ireland are selling a drug which tackles a very rare kidney disease. That drug costs €400, 000 per patient per annum, and it's not a cure. It's extremely useful; if you have that unfortunate condition, you're going to be delighted to have this drug. But, as a society, can we afford to continue to supply drugs at that price to the population. Already, some of the biggest companies in terms of bio-pharmaceutical production are already in Ireland. What we do as a research group, is we interact with them in order to first of all learn what the challenges are: they're typically around making these cells more efficient at producing those drugs. So we look at a very specific group of genes within those cells to control the way those cells make protein. These genes are actually regulators, they're like the tuners on a radio that turn the volume up and down, and we use those genes to tune the way the cells produce those drugs. Already those interventions are improving the efficiency, and we hope, as time goes on and more of these drugs come to market, that they'll become more accessible in terms of price.