Abstract

Friday 5 December, 13:00 – 14:00

Speaker: Hugh Robinsion, PDN , University of Cambridge

Talk Title: Ion Channels, Electrical Activity and Energy Consumption in Neuroendocrine Cancer Cells

Biography: Hugh Robinson studied Natural Sciences as an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, graduating in 1982. After a year working on cardiac muscle electrophysiology at Rockefeller University and mathematical modelling of neurons at the MIT with Christof Koch, he returned to Cambridge for his PhD, in the lab of Denis Haydon in the Physiological Laboratory, on the gating of single potassium channels. He then moved to Japan for postdoctoral work on synaptic glutamate receptors at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for Neurosciences (1988-91) and developing multielectrode array technology in the Materials Science Department of NTT Basic Research Laboratories (1991-93). In 1993, he returned to the Physiological Laboratory in Cambridge, firstly as Wellcome Vision Research Fellow, and then from 1996, as University Lecturer, and Fellow of Corpus Christi College. He is currently Professor of Cellular Electrophysiology in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience in the University of Cambridge. He has worked on many aspects of electrical signal integration by neurons, pioneering techniques of nonstationary fluctuation analysis of synaptic currents, and conductance injection (dynamic clamp) to probe the function of populations of ion channels in neuronal activity, and studied biophysical mechanisms of thresholds, synchronisation of firing, and irregular action potential generation in various cortical neuron types. Since 2017, he has focused on understanding the roles of ion channels and electrical signalling in cancer cells, and the emerging field of cancer neuroscience.