BNA Festival of Neuroscience – We were there!
The British Neuroscience Association (BNA) Festival of Neuroscience 2025 was held in Liverpool from the 27th to the 30th of April. The Festival certainly started with a bang, as Liverpool F.C. confirmed their status as Premier League champions on the evening of the 27th with a 5-1 thumping of Tottenham Hotspur F.C.! In addition, the glorious weather allowed participants the opportunity to explore the fantastic Albert Dock area of Liverpool during breaks in the meeting programme.
In partnership with the BNA, the MURIDAE cluster had organised a symposium to showcase the research of the MRC National Mouse Genetics Network (MRC NMGN) and highlight available opportunities for the neuroscience community to collaborate and interact with the Network. Following a brief introduction to the MCR NMGN by MURIDAE lead and symposium chair Anthony Isles, four talks were presented by early-career researchers linked to the Network. First was MURIDAE post-doc Michal Milczarek, who gave an overview of his incredible work developing home-cage monitoring of young, pre-weaning mice. Karolina Dec spoke about her project, funded by the MRC NMGN “Business Engagement Fund”, where she is developing induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models that parallel the MURIDAE genetic mouse models in order to streamline drug testing. Next up was Sevda Boyanova, representing the UK Dementia Research Institute Animal Models Programme, an associate programme of the MRC NMGN. Sevda presented a detailed overview of the phenotypic screening of mouse models for dementia that has been carried out at the MRC Mary Lyon Centre. Finally, Nicholas Clifton, an Associate member of the Network, described how using sophisticated “omics” technologies, combining analyses of human and mouse model data, can provide insight into changes in the communication between neurons that occur in schizophrenia. Overall, the symposium stimulated a lot of discussion and interest that will hopefully translate into new collaborations in the future.
In addition to the symposium, there were poster presentations throughout the meeting by other MURIDAE post docs and associated PhD students, and many of the MURIDAE principal investigators were also in attendance. Consequently, the informal “MRC NGMN curry” was a great chance to catch up and discuss the science presented at the meeting. Many of us also attended the conference dinner, held in the magnificent Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool. Altogether, the BNA Festival of Neuroscience 2025 was a fantastic meeting that was enjoyed by all the MRC NMGN participants – roll on BNA 2027 in Belfast!