Neuroclub 2026 Seminar

Supported by the British Neuroscience Association

Alongside pizzas, this week we have Eshita Sengupta and Prof Nikita Gamper

Eshita will talk about: Developing adenoviral tools for targeted gene delivery in DRG neurons

Eshita Sengupta is a fourth-year PhD student in the Neuroscience Department at the University of Leeds, supervised by Dr. Viktor Lukacs and Prof. Nikita Gamper. Her doctoral research focuses on developing an adenoviral methodology to transfect dorsal root ganglion neurons, building toward a novel phenotypic screening approach that can identify rare and hard-to-find neuronal subpopulations—a challenge that has long eluded the field. Eshita completed her undergraduate degree in Biotechnology in India before pursuing a Master's in Clinical and Behavioural Neuroscience at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, prior to joining the University of Leeds for her PhD.

Prof. Gamper will then talk about: Copines – a new family of ion channel trafficking partners in the somatosensory system

Copines are a family of calcium-sensitive phospholipid-binding proteins with functions associated with membrane dynamics, trafficking, and intracellular signalling. Out of nine mammalian copine isoforms, Copine-3, -4, and -6 are highly expressed in the peripheral somatosensory neurons. Recently, we demonstrated that in the rodent dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons, Copine-6 functions as a TRPM3 escort protein: it promotes TRPM3 insertion into the plasma membrane in an activity-dependent manner, thus controlling the sensitivity of sensory neurons to noxious heat. I will present this published work and provide an update on the ongoing efforts to identify the function of two other copines expressed in the DRG.