Something for everyone at the Cambridge Genetics Knowledge Park Annual Symposium 2005

Cambridge Genetics Knowledge Park (CGKP) held their fourth Annual Symposium at the Wellcome Trust Conference Centre, Hinxton last week. The event was attended by over 100 guests representing the full spectrum of the communities that CGKP brings together, including health professionals, the commercial sector, patient groups and academics in science, law and the humanities.

This variety was reflected in the programme. Presenting an overview of the year’s achievements, CGKP staff highlighted their national review aimed at improving services for patients with inherited metabolic diseases; and the establishment of a new international network, GRAPH Int, to coordinate global efforts in public health genetics.

Guest speakers’ topics ranged from the use of emerging microarray technology in diagnosis, through the role of law in the lifesciences to a social anthropologist’s perspective of interdisciplinary working. Dr Charles Shaw-Smith from the Department of Medical Genetics at Addenbrooke’s Hospital and the University of Cambridge, gave a fascinating insight into the potential offered by microarray technology for detecting submicroscopic abnormalities in chromosomes.

He spoke about the history of using genetic technologies in diagnosing learning disability, from looking at chromosomes to identify Downs Syndrome in the 1950s, to banding in the 1970s and the use of FISH (fluorescence in situ hybridization) in the 1980s. In the new millennium, microarray technology makes it possible to pinpoint previously undetectable chromosomal deletions, giving patients and their families the benefit of a definite genetic diagnosis for their condition.

The audience was then treated to a stimulating talk on the relationship between the law and public health from Julian Hitchcock, Senior Solicitor from Cambridge law firm Mills & Reeve. He explored the balance of power between patients, doctors and government as a complicated and mutually dependent triangular relationship, leading to the conclusion that those who discover new treatments, the researchers, are the true power holders, because “any right to be treated depends, inescapably, upon the existence of treatment.” He concluded that with the “life science revolution” the researcher’s relationship with the public, and engagement in the processes of the law becomes more important.

The final speaker, Dr Elena Khlinoskaya Rockhill, a social anthropologist from the University of Cambridge, spoke about her on-going study of CGKP’s interdisciplinary working methods. She described how CGKP worked to a knowledge management model that they view as the antithesis of the academic model, acting as a distributor of knowledge rather than concentrating on the pursuit of highly specialised but narrow area. Despite this, intellectual freedom in each branch of the organisation was encouraged, and she noted that CGKP had an “outward orientation,” was posed to “react to issues as they arise” and that a lot of work had been done collaboratively with other organisations. She concluded that “the open structure the Knowledge Park has created offers a research model of a management enterprise (or, research within management)” that is, a hybrid of a management and a research model.

Next year’s Annual Symposium will be held on 15th November 2006, and promises to be a significant event marking the end of CGKP’s first five years.

Click on the thumbnails below to see the posters from the symposium ( PDFs require Acrobat Reader to view).

Dissemination poster	Epidemiology poster	Inherited Metabolic Disease	Industry poster
Education poster	Research into Practice	Public involvement	HuGENet