Partners
Addvenom comprises members from five research institutes:
University of Bristol
The University of Bristol is one of the most prestigious universities in the UK. It is a thriving international community combining excellence in research and innovation with a vibrant entrepreneurial culture.
Research is at the heart of the University’s mission and accounts for its international reputation. In the 2014 UK Research Excellence Framework (REF2014) assessment exercise, 93% of research at the University was deemed to be of an international standard.
Over 60% of the research assessed was awarded either the top 4-star rating, defined as ‘world leading’, or the 3-star rating, ‘internationally excellent’. The University participates in hundreds of international collaborations both within and outside of Europe and attracts research funding from organisations around the world.
Role in Addovenom
The ADDovenom project is part of and is administered by the Bristol BioDesign Institute. Work on ADDovenom will be undertaken in the School of Biochemistry which is particularly strong in:
- Synthetic Biology with the BrisSynBio Centre
- Structural Biology
- Imaging
- Single-Molecule Techniques
- Cell Biology
The School offers access to top facilities, including the Faculty’s Wolfson Bioimaging and Proteomics Facilities, and the BrisSynBio Biosuite located in the school, as well as crossdisciplinary training of early career researchers. The School has been awarded with the Athena SWAN Silver Award (2018) for excellence in gender equality in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine).
The work described here will take place in the new Max Planck Centre for Minimal Biology in Bristol, which is directed by Berger, Mann and Wolfson and is world class in Synthetic Biology. The University of Bristol will express, purify and characterise ADDobodies and ADDomers, generate a naïve ADDobody library, carry out in vitro selection/evolution by Ribosome Display, provide sample for in cellulo and in vivo characterisation, constructs for manufacturing antivenoms and determine structures.
University of Liège
The University of Liège is the only public and complete university institution of the French-speaking region of Belgium. ULiege
counts 2,977 lecturers-researchers and 24,688 students (incl. 2,095 PhD students). 23% of the students at ULiege are foreign
students from 127 different countries.
A wide variety of fundamental and applied research projects have emerged from about 43 Faculty Research Units and from 11 interfaculty Research Units. On the international level, the University of Liège is actively involved in research projects with more than seventy countries worldwide. ULiege has developed an active policy in terms of technology transfer, resulting in the creation of more than 144 spin-off companies and in the ownership of 834 patents.
Role in Addovenom
ULiege will be in charge of analysing the venoms and sequencing their toxins by various proteomics approaches. The MS-Lab has a long-standing experience of such development, especially due to its position of work-package leader for proteomics in the European Project ‘Venomics’ (FP7- HEATH 2011-2015).
Within the Venomics program, 200 venoms have been characterised to identify peptide content and, combined to their respective transcriptomes, which led to the generation of a databank of more than 20,000 toxin sequences. In this project, the objective will be different and more challenging because ADDovenom does not necessarily aim at sequencing the smallest, most abundant and easily detected toxins, but the most toxic, whatever their size or their abundancy in the venom.
Aix-Marseille University
Aix-Marseille University was officially opened on January 1, 2012, replacing the University of Provence, University of the
Mediterranean and Paul Cézanne University. Aix-Marseille University has nearly 78,000 students including 10,000 international
students, 7,680 faculty and staff members, 12 doctoral schools and nearly 3,650 PhD students.
Aix-Marseille University is home to 132 research facilities: 118 research units and 14 federative research structures, linked to France’s biggest research institutions. Today, as well as being one of the youngest universities in France, it is also the largest in terms of its student body, its
faculty and staff, and its budget in the whole of the French-speaking world.
Role in Addovenom
The AMU-AFMB protein expression core facilities will oversee the expression and purification of most of the toxins, epitope strings, ADDobodies and ADDomers of the project. Purified proteins and complexes will be characterised biochemically and biophysically on the “AMU-AFMB biophysics core facility” by several methods including ELISA, surface plasmon resonance (SPR), Thermophoresis, SECMALS and thermal shift assays
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine is a UK Higher Education Institute and registered medical research charity employing 490 staff in UK and 42 overseas (mostly in African countries). Last year LSTM secured £221m in research contracts to maintain its annually increasing research income. With a mission to reduce the burden of sickness and mortality in disease endemic countries through the delivery of effective interventions which improve human health and are relevant to the poorest communities, LSTM’s research has a very strong research-translation focus and considerable presence in tropical countries. LSTM was ranked 6th out of UK’s 128 research institutes in terms of ‘Impact’ and 24th overall in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework assessment.
Role in Addovenom
Main tasks in the project involve provision of venoms and venom gland transcriptomes for eight snakes, basic “serology” of ADDomer recognition of toxin components, determination of the ability of ADDomers and ADDobodies to in vitro neutralise the function of each class of toxins and comprehensive pre-clinical in vivo testing of the best ADDomer candidates in murine models of venom lethality. LSTM will perform pharmacokinetic characterizations of ADDomers in rodent models and examination of toxicity of ADDomers in a rodent model. LSTM will advocate for the next phase of ADDovenom research – clinical trial preparedness in subSaharan Africa.
iBet
iBET (Instituto de Biologia Experimental e Tecnológica) is a private non-profit research intensive institution with over 30 years of experience in developing innovative solutions for the biopharmaceutical industry. Its mission is to integrate the biological and biochemical knowledge generated in academic and industrial R&D projects into the global economy. Key areas of expertise include the bioprocessing and in-depth characterization of complex therapeutic agents such as recombinant proteins, viral vectors for vaccine and gene therapy and stem cells for cell therapy. Working with baculovirus and insect cell production systems for more than 20 years, iBET is a leading research institution in the field.
Role in Addovenom
iBET has successfully developed production and purification processes of complex and functionalized biopharmaceuticals as well as analytics and systems biology tools for virus-based bioprocesses. This knowledge will be used in ADDovenom for process development for ADDomers production:
- implementation of supporting analytical methods
- upstream and downstream process development
- production of ADDomers