Institute for Regeneration and Repair

26/08/2026

Accelerating drug discovery with new real-time cell imaging method 🔬💡

The Vendrell lab has developed a new method that allows for fluorescent probes to light up when bound to targets of interest on the cell surface. They found the drug avasimibe affects immune cell behaviour important in cancer, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis.

Summary 🔎: https://edin.ac/4hJIZsz
Full paper 🗞️: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-026-02228-0

Image: Microscopy images showing lead fluorogenic peptide (red) binds to PD-1 cell-surface receptor on T-cells when activated (right), but not when T cells are inactive (left).

22/07/2026

Congratulations to IRR Group Leader Dr Sofia Ferreira Gonzalez who co-led a fantastic UK Space Biology Summit with Dr Katherine Baxter (University of Glasgow)! 🚀

The UK Space Biology Summit, held in Edinburgh, brought together researchers, industry, government, and representatives from UK and international space agencies to establish a co-ordinated vision for the future of UK space-life sciences. 🔭🔬

It’s exciting times for UK Space Biology.

Read more: https://edin.ac/3TfVz8D

21/07/2026

Our IRR researchers are presenting at this year's 'The Provocateurs', a staple of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe !

The academics will be joined by a comedian and will cover their cutting edge research with audiences at The Stand Comedy Club, Edinburgh

Book your tickets now!

https://www.thestand.co.uk/whats-on/show-tag/159/the-provocateurs-fringe-2026

16/07/2026

IRR's Rod Mitchell was featured in the Guardian this week in a piece on male fertility decline: Spermageddon
https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2026/jul/11/s***mageddon-world-facing-male-reproductive-crisis

You can hear his thoughts (and those of IRR's Richard Weller) LIVE at their Provocateurs show at The Stand as part of the Edinburgh Fringe in August! Tickets are selling fast! https://www.thestand.co.uk/performance/22517/the-provocateurs-this-dermatologist-recommends-sunshine-s***mageddon/20260829/stand%204

Reports of falling s***m counts and testosterone levels have fuelled fears over chemicals, pollution and modern lifestyles. But how much do scientists agree on what is affecting male fertility?

15/07/2026

Earlier this year we had a visit from the BBC to film IRR spinout, Trogenix. Learn more about the company's groundbreaking research into glioblastoma, a rare brain cancer, below

Tech Now meets a firm developing treatments to target cancer cells and stop them returning.

10/07/2026

Dr Lucy Whitaker's research into the use of total-body PET scaning for endometriosis has been featured as a case study by the National PET Imaging Platform. Read more about the research here: https://npip.org.uk/resources/case-studies/

09/07/2026

Congratulations to Roseanne Rosario for winning IRR's 3rd Research in a Flash competition! 🏆

The winner was chosen by audience vote for giving the most accessible and engaging presentation.

A huge thank you to all of our speakers for sharing their work: Georgia Morgan, Heather Love, Ian Chambers, Isabella Jamieson Morris, John Henderson, Roseanne Rosario and Matthieu Vermeren.

And thank you to everyone who joined us. It was especially great to welcome 10 high school interns from local schools, who are spending the summer at IRR and INCR through the Edinburgh BioQuarter internship programme. We hope you enjoyed hearing the breadth of research taking place across IRR!

07/07/2026

Douglas Gibson's team at the Centre for Reproductive Health have shown that people with endometriosis have a distinct pattern of hormones which could be identified by a blood test.
The research looks at androgens (typically thought of as 'male hormones' but are present in females too) and has been 95% accurate in identifying people with endometriosis.

https://regeneration-repair.ed.ac.uk/hormone-differences-could-pave-way-for-endometriosis-blood-test

30/06/2026

IRR researcher Richard Weller is an expert on the benefits of sunlight ☀️ Read his foreword and about some of his work in In Defense of Sunlight by Rowan Jacobsen

Read a review of the book in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01822-z

29/06/2026

About to have a baby and thinking about contraception for afterwards? We have a trial to test a new way of providing coil insertion at the time of birth. To be part of the study or find out more, email [email protected] or read more here: https://reproductive-health.ed.ac.uk/research/clinical-studies/pop-in-study