Leader: Jeremy Tomlinson
The Oxford BRC provides core support for a dedicated team of scientists who manage and run the Diabetes and Metabolism Theme laboratory. The lab performs a wide range of biochemical and genomic assays for theme investigators as well as supporting human islet isolation and assessment of human islet quality for clinical and research use. We have a dedicated mass spectrometry unit where metabolic tracers (stable-isotope labelled fatty acids and other molecules) used in our human in vivo studies are analysed, and a number of core platforms, including Envision and MSD plate readers an ILab 650 Clinical Chemistry analyser, ABI 7900s and confocal microscopes.
Thomas Clague – BRC Diabetes & Metabolism Lab Manager
As the BRC Diabetes & Metabolism Lab Manager, I head up a small core team in OCDEM that perform a wide range of biochemical and genomic assays for theme investigators, as well as supporting human islet isolation and assessment of human islet quality for clinical and research use.
Farah Nematkhah
I started my career as a lab technician at the Wellcome Trust Centre here at Oxford University. I then left briefly in 2017 for a stint in the private sector. After gaining new industry experience, I re-joined the University of Oxford in September 2019. I am now working in the Diabetes and Metabolism Core Labs and my duties include large scale DNA extraction, quantitation, QC and normalisation and Biobanking. I also help the Pancreas and Islet Cell Transplantation group with isolating and preparing the Islet cells for transplantation.
Bridget Bickers
I started working as a BRC Research Assistant in December 2019 and have been busy extracting DNA from blood samples as part of a large study. My role has also included quantitation, quality control and normalisation of the extracted DNA to ensure that it is suitable for downstream use in sequencing.