SSF funds industrial PhD student for Aishe Sarshad in collaboration with AstraZeneca
The PhD project, has been awarded 3.25 million SEK from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF), will explore how small RNA molecules can be used to activate specific genes. AstraZeneca is providing additional funding, ensuring that the entire PhD project is fully financed for four years.
“For about a year now, I’ve been collaborating with AstraZeneca, trying to understand how gene regulation occurs in the cell nucleus. Our focus is on gene regulation through small RNA molecules,” says Aishe Sarshad.
Aishe Sarshad, assistant senior lecturer at Sahlgrenska Academy, and one of the research leaders affiliated with the Wallenberg centre for moleculär and translational medicine.
“We will soon open the call for applications to recruit the PhD student for the project, which I am very excited about!”
Oligonucleotide therapy
Aishe Sarshad’s partner at AstraZeneca is Annabelle Biscans, who is a director at AstraZeneca R&D in the Oligonucleotide Discovery unit. Annabelle Biscans was previously a postdoctoral fellow in Anastasia Khvorova’s lab at the RNA Therapeutics Institute in the U.S., one of the pioneers in oligonucleotide therapy research.
“Annabelle and I have a very strong collaboration. We already hold regular meetings, about once a month, where we discuss results and plan future steps. The new SSF-funded project will naturally integrate into these meetings, providing us with an even better opportunity to strategically develop the project together with our teams,” says Aishe.
Different types of RNA
So far, the research collaboration with AstraZeneca has focused on using small interfering RNA molecules (siRNA) to silence genes like oncogenes, which can contribute to cancer development.
“In the project now funded by SSF, however, we will do the opposite – we will try to activate genes using another type of RNA molecule, called small activating RNA (saRNA),” explains Aishe Sarshad.
Both of these types of RNA molecules (siRNA and saRNA) have the same basic function, as they both use complementary sequences to interact with specific target RNAs in the cell. The goal of the project is to gain a deeper understanding of these mechanisms and to develop new tools that can be used to modulate gene expression in a precise manner.
Current challenges
“To optimize our methods for studying RNA interference at the subcellular level. It is technically demanding and requires us to fine-tune our tools to isolate specific interactions between small RNA molecules and their targets in different cellular environments. This is a critical aspect of understanding how these mechanisms influence disease development.
