Anne McLaren seated between two Japanese geishas, eating from a bowl

Anne McLaren: Lecture series and events

There are several lecture series named after Anne, and the Trust Fund set up in Anne’s memory supports events, activities and the work of scholars in STEM.

Complete poster for Jennifer Doudna's Anne McLaren lecture in the Institute's 2018 Seminar Series

The Anne McLaren Lecture, an annual highlight in the Gurdon Institute Seminar Series

2023 Sara Wickström, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine, Münster, Coordination of cell states and tissue architecture by mechanical forces.
2022 Yukiko Gotoh, University of Tokyo, Embryonic and adult neural stem cells: What underlies their difference?
2021 Elizabeth Robertson, Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University Oxford, Signalling pathways regulating cell fate allocation in the early mouse embryo.
2020 Titia de Lange, Rockefeller University, New York, How CST protects telomeres and double-strand breaks.
2019 Janet Rossant, Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto, The blastocyst and its stem cells; from mouse to human relevance.
2018 Jennifer Doudna, University of California, Berkeley, CRISPR-Cas Gene Editing: Biology, Technology and Ethics.
2017 Asifa Akhtar, Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, Freiburg, Epigenetic regulation by histone acetylation.
2016 Gillian Griffiths, CIMR, Cambridge, Cell polarity in lymphocytes.
2015 Brigid Hogan, Duke University Medical Center, North Carolina, Stem cells in lung maintenance and repair.
2014 Maria Leptin, EMBO, Heidelberg, Cell shape and morphogenesis: sub cellular and supra-cellular mechanisms.
2013 Amanda Fisher, Imperial College, London, Reprogramming and cellular dominance.
2012 Suzanne Eaton, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology & Genetics, Dresden, Lipoproteins and signalling lipids in the Hedgehog pathway.
2010 Susan Gasser, Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Basel, Remodelling the nucleus through development.

The Dame Anne McLaren Lecture, UK Stem Cell Network

2011 4th Annual Science Meeting, University of York. The fourth Dame Anne McLaren Memorial Lecture given by Professor Gail Martin, University of California in San Francisco, USA.
2010 3rd Annual Science Meeting, University of Nottingham. The Third Dame Anne McLaren Memorial Lecture given by Dr Fiona Watt of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research, Cambridge.
2009 2nd Annual Science Meeting, Oxford. The second Dame Anne McLaren Memorial Lecture was given by Dr Janet Rossant, head of research at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and Deputy Scientific Director of the Stem Cell Network.

The Annual Anne McLaren Memorial Lecture given at the International Society for Stem Cell Research Annual Meeting

2015 ISSCR 13th Annual Meeting, Stockholm, Sweden. The Eighth Annual Anne McLaren Memorial Lecture by given by Jeannie T. Lee, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, USA.
2014 ISSCR 12th Annual Meeting, Vancouver, Canada. The Seventh Annual Anne McLaren Memorial Lecture was given by Robin Lovell-Badge, MRC National Institute for Medical Research, UK, on ‘Sex, stem cells, physiology and policy’.
2012 ISSCR 10th Annual Meeting, Yokohama, Japan. The Fifth Annual Anne McLaren Memorial Lecture was given by Fiona Watt, who presented her recent research into the regulation of epidermal stem cell fate decisions by intrinsic and extrinsic signalling.
2011 ISSCR 9th Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada. The Fourth Annual Anne McLaren Memorial Lecture was given by Dr. Nicole Le Douarin, who reinforced the importance of our understanding of early development and particularly focused on the contributions of neural crest derivatives to adult tissues and how they may inform, and confound, current work investigating adult stem cells.
2010 ISSCR 8th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, USA. The Third Annual Anne McLaren Memorial Lecture was given by Brigid L Hogan, Duke University.

Meetings including those sponsored by the Anne McLaren Memorial Trust Fund

2021 Anne McLaren Research Fund Meeting on 23rd March organised by the Cambridge Reproduction SRI and part-sponsored by the Trust Fund: Synthetic gametes and germline development for science and society. Speakers included: Naoko Irie and Azim Surani from the Gurdon Institute’s Surani lab, and former Institute group leader Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz. Watch talks from the meeting on the YouTube playlist.
2018 6th January Prof Kate Hardy’s Anne McLaren Distinguished Scientist Lecture: One orchestra, three conductors: How to fine tune early follicle development was given at the Society for Reproduction and Fertility.
2017 In December the fund sponsored the Progress Educational Trust (PET) conference Crossing Frontiers: moving the boundaries of human reproduction. Download the report.
2017 In July the fund sponsored the 14th International Limb Development and Regeneration Conference in Edinburgh. Download the report.
2017 20th July The British Library in partnership with the Anne McLaren Trust presented an evening celebrating the life and work of Dame Anne McLaren. The BL holds an extensive archive of Anne’s papers.
2016 12 December: Widening Translation: emerging models of successful science: An international conference co-sponsored by the Anne McLaren Memorial Fund and the Wellcome Trust. Visit https://www.wellcomeevents.org/annemclarentranslation to register.
2016 Joint sponsor of a one-day conference, Rethinking the ethics of embryo research: genome editing, 14 days and beyond, in London on Wednesday 7th December.
2016 The Fund supported several events: a session at the annual meeting of the Progress Educational Trust on The 14-day rule; a meeting of the BSDB in Edinburgh entitled Using chimaeras to study developmental processes on 28-30th August; and a bursary at Kellogg College, Oxford, in conjunction with the inauguration of Anne McLaren House.
2015 On 21st October, the Fund sponsored an event run by the Progress Educational Trust, titled Beating the Biological Clock – Should You Freeze Your Eggs? at University College London. Download the report.
2014 On 2nd December the Progress Educational Trust annual meeting on The Commercialisation of Life at the Institute of Child Health, London, included a session sponsored by the Fund, with a focus on fertility treatment.
2013 In March, the Trustees sponsored a meeting in Christ’s College Cambridge’s Visual Arts Centre at the launch of an exhibition, Excavating the past, by Syrian-born artist Issam Kourbaj, to raise money for Syrian mothers and their families.
2012 In December, the Trustees sponsored a lecture at the Futures in Reproduction meeting to celebrate the award of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine to Professor Sir Robert Edwards, held in Churchill College, Cambridge.
2012 Quangoing, Going, Gone: What should happen to the HFEA? A meeting held in conjunction with the Progress Educational Trust on 11th September in the Darwin Lecture Theatre, University College London.
2011 Oops, I forgot to have a baby! An interactive workshop took place on 10th February at the University of Cambridge Clinical School at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, in association with the Cambridge Interdisciplinary Reproduction Forum (CIRF).
2010 The End of the HFEA: Are We Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater? In the 20th anniversary year of the UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, an evening debate was held at the Royal Society on 17th January, organised by the Progress Educational Trust in partnership with the Fund and supported by the MRC, to discuss how fertility treatment and embryo research could (and should) be regulated in future.
2010 An Anne McLaren Fund Public Education Event was held on 10 March in The Yusuf Hamied Theatre, Christ’s College when Melanie Davies and Susan Bewley led a discussion on the reality of ovarian ageing for the young professional woman.
2008 The Future of Biological Control: the legacy of Anne McLaren in law, ethics and policy in reproductive biomedicine. Wellcome Collection Conference Centre. Documented in BIOS News.
2008 Anne McLaren Memorial Lecture, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University by John Gurdon, The reversal of cell differentiation and prospects for cell replacement therapy. Video and audio files can be downloaded from the University of Oxford website.