Dr. Vincent Kelly

Vitamins, minerals and micronutrients are naturally occurring compounds with essential biological activities. Although their consumption does not provide any direct calorific return, as would be the case for macronutrients i.e. protein, fat, carbohydrate, their deficiency can have a major impact on human health. Understanding the role that such compounds play in human physiology can be greatly assisted through the study of transgenic animals which can be engineered to mirror the disease effects seen in humans. For the past decade, our laboratory has been pursuing a largely unexplored avenue of research, working on the queuine micronutrient. This molecule is made exclusively by bacteria but surprisingly is salvaged by plants and animals, including humans, for largely unknown reasons. Our efforts succeeded in identifying the mechanism that mammals use to obtain queuine from the diet and we have made substantial progress in understanding queuine's physiological role. Part of the attraction of working in the micronutrient field is the breath of physiological effects that these often-overlooked molecules can have in disease and human health. Sir James Black, Scottish physician, pharmacologist and 1988 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, once famously stated that "The most fruitful basis for the discovery of a new drug is to start with an old drug". In this vein of thought, our group in collaboration with colleagues in Chemistry, have been developing mimetics of queuine to interrogate the possibility of using such compounds to treat disease. Recently, we have published the first of our findings, showing that queuine mimetics can drastically reverse the clinical disease process (i.e. paralysis and autoimmunity) associated with the animal model of Multiple Sclerosis. Based on these findings, my colleagues and I have co-founded a university spin-out company called Azadyne that is now developing queuine-based therapeutics for the treatment of autoimmune disease. Arguably, above any other aspect of human physiology, the ability to give rise to offspring is paramount. There is now a growing awareness, as highlighted extensively in the media, that fertility in men is dropping drastically in the Western world. Sperm counts have more than halved in the past 40 years and it is estimated that the levels are continuing to fall by an average of 1.4% per year. Although there is no impending threat of human extinction, the impact can be tragic for those couples trying to conceive. Surprisingly, the underlying cause for this drop in fertility remains uncertain. Based on our laboratory's experience in fertility and transgenic technologies (see below) we have ongoing investigations on the use of micronutrients in male infertility, that are based on two commercial projects. Our group also has an ongoing research interest in developing natural anti-cancer agents for the treatment of oral and oesophageal cancer. With over 25 years of experience in transgenic technologies, our research group established the only transgenic facility on the island of Ireland (www.transgenics.ie) a little over 10 years ago. Presently, the transgenic facility offers a range of services including, rederivation, IVF, sperm and egg cryopreservation, dry-shipping and cold-shipping of germplasm and CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology to manipulate the mouse genome. Our transgenic facility has carried out hundreds of vital transgenic tasks for researchers in Trinity College and other universities nationally. As always, we are delighted to discuss new projects and provide advice to researchers on the optimal transgenic methods to address individual research questions.

  Animal Biotechnology   Animal Reproduction   Embryology   Immunology, Immunotherapy   Nutrition