Against The Grain - The Podcast

Today's episode features guest host Michael Upshall (guest editor, Charleston Briefings) who talks with Michele Frison, Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit at the University of Cambridge. Michele is originally from Italy and completed his PhD at UCL in England with a focus on cell biology. He defines himself as a cell biologist and biochemist, and much of his current research specializes in cell and mitochondrial biology, aging and disease.  The Mitochondrial Biology Unit is part of a larger infrastructure that runs clinical trials for rare diseases. Michele says the process is very slow, taking up to a decade or so, but that he has been fortunate enough to have made a recent discovery that could well lead to clinical trial: the protein target that he's worked with is actually a target for drugs that have already passed phase one clinical trials and are now passing phase two for Parkinson's disease. If the research he has done in models replicates in humans, then it could w