Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience

Senior Technical Officer and Technical Director of The Multi-Imaging Centre
Tel: +44 (0)1223 333774, Fax: +44 (0)1223 333786/840, E-mail: jns1000@cam.ac.uk

The MIC has acted as a focus for interdepartmental collaborations between departments of the school of biological sciences in biological electron microscopy for 44 years and for ex vivo, in vivo and in vitro confocal microscopy for 14 years.
Over the last 5 years more and more non-biological departments are requiring the use of electron microscopy to study biomaterials. Frequently they require modest resolution and high contrast for which the MIC instrument is ideal (Zhai et al, 2004, Hansen et al, 2005).
More groups are interested in the interface between biomaterials and biological structures (Porter et al, 2003 and Porter et al, 2004). These types of studies are particularly challenging, as they require the preparation of thin sections at the interface between very hard and very soft materials. The MIC has developed methods based on ultramicrotomy at ambient and at low temperature. They have successfully sectioned the interface between a biological film (bacterial and algae) and an underlying quartzite particle. The hardness of quartzite exceeds that of glass and approaches that of diamond.

My own interests are: Cardiovascular Ultrastructure, Neuroanatomy and Nanoparticle Cytotoxicity and the development of new imaging modalities.

Colleagues
Professor Graham Burton
Dr Sue Jones
Dr Arih Lew
Dr Teresa Tiffert

Main Collaborators
Professor Athene Donald (Cavendish Laboratories, Cambridge)
Dr Paul Midgley (HREM, Materials sciences, Cambridge)
Dr Alice Warley (KCL)
Dr Alex Porter (Imperial College London)
Dr Mahiri Gass (SuperSTEM)
Dr Clemens Kaminski (Chemical Engineering, Cambridge)
Professor Chris Dobson (Chemistry Cambridge)
Dr Andrew Grace (Papworth Hospital and Biochemistry, Cambridge)
Professor Chris Huang (PDN Cambridge)
Dr Jonathan Gillard (Radiology Cambridge)
Dr Peter Maycox (GlaxoSmithKlein)
Professor Cathy Shannahan (KCL)
Dr Anthony Davenport (Clinical Pharmacology, Cambridge)
Dr Mihaly Posfai (Dept of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Pannon, Hungary)

Main sources of funding
BBSRC, Wellcome Trust, EPSRC and DTI.

Selected publications
Porter,A.E., Patel,N., Skepper,J.N., Best,S.M. & Bonfield. W. (2003) Comparison of in vivo dissolution processes in hydroxyapatite and silicon substituted hydroxyapatite bioceramics. Biomaterials 25, 4609-4620.

Porter,A.E., Patel,N., Skepper,J.N., Best,S.M. & Bonfield. (2004) Effect of sintered silicate-substituted hydroxyapatite on remodelling processes at the bone-implant interface. Biomaterials 16, 3303-3314.

Zhai,S., Hansen,R.K., Taylor,R., Skepper,J.N., Sanches,R. & Slater,N.K.H. (2004) Effect of freezing rates and excipients on the infectivity of a live viral vaccine during lyophilization. Biotechnology Progress 20, 1113-1120.

Hung,T.H., Charnock-Jones,D.S., Skepper,J.N. & Burton,G.J. (2004) Secretion of tumour necrosis factor-α from human placental tissues induced by hypoxia-reoxygenation caused endothelial cell activation in vitro: a potential mediator of the inflammatory response in preeclampsia. American Journal of Pathology 164, 1049-1061.

Trividi,R.A., U-King-Im,J.M., Graves,M.J., Cross,J.J., Horsley,J., Goddard,M.J., Skepper,J.N., Quartey,G., Warburton,E.A., Joubert,I., Wang,L., Kirkpatrick,P.J., Brown,J. & Gillard, (2004) In Vivo detection of macrophages in human carotid atheroma temporal dependence of ultrasmall superparamagnetic particles of iron oxide enhanced MR imaging. Stroke 35, 1631-1635.

Zhang,Q., Skepper,J.N., Ragnauth,C.D., Warren,D.T., Roberts,R.G., Weissberg,P.L., Ellis,J.A. & Shanahan,C.M. (2005) Nesprin-2 binds lamin and emerin at the nuclear envelope and is abundant in the sarcomere of skeletal muscle. Journal of Cell science 15, 673-687.

Kleinz,M.J., Skepper,J.N. & Davenport,A.P.(2005) Immunocytochemical localisation of the apelin receptor, APJ, to human cardiomyocytes, vascular smooth muscle and endothelial cells. Regulatory Peptides 126, 233-240.

Arrebola.F., Fernandez-Segura.E., Campos.A., Crespo.P.V., Skepper.J.N. & A Warley.A. (2006) Changes in intracellular electrolyte concentrations during apoptosis induced by UV irradiation of human myeloblastic (U937 ) cells. American Journal of Physiology 290, C638-649.

Usher-Smith.J.A., Skepper.J.N., Fraser.J.A. & Huang.C.L.H. (2006)The effect of repetitive stimulation on cell volume and the relationship to membrane potential in amphibian skeletal muscle. Pflugers Archives 11, 1-9.

Alexandra E. Porter, Karin Muller, Jeremy N Skepper, Paul Midgely, Mark Welland. (2006) Uptake of C60 by human monocyte macrophages. Its localization and implications for toxicity: studied by high resolution electron microscopy and electron tomography. Acta Biomaterialia 4, 409-419.

Critchlow.HM., Maycox.PR., Skepper.JN. & Krylova.O. (2006) Clozapine and haloperidol differentially regulate dendritic spine formation and synaptogenesis in rat hippocampal neurons. Molecular & Cellular Neuroscience. 32, 356-365.

Muller,K.H., Skepper,J.N., Posfai,M., Trevedi,R., Howarth,S., Corot,C., Lancelot,E., Thompson,P.W., Brown,A.P. & Gillard,J.H. (2007) Effect of ultrasmall superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (Ferumoxtran-10) on human monocyte-macrophages in vitro. Biomaterials 28, 1629-1642.