By Heather Hobbs BRINGING YOU THE LATEST RESEARCH & EVENTS NEWS FROM THE SCIENCE INDUSTRY


KU Leuven Lab Co-ordinates €9m Effort to Find New Deep-Sea Drugs KU Leuven scientist Camila Esguerra and the Laboratory for Molecular Biodiscovery (headed by Prof. Dr. Peter de Witte) are coordinating a €9.5 million, EU-funded project to collect and study marine microbes extracted from some of the ocean’s deepest biomes.


The large-scale, four-year ‘PharmaSea’ project, which began in October 2012, brings together 24 partners from 13 countries and involves the collection of mud and sediment samples from extreme oceanic trenches, the creation of small-molecule extract libraries from marine bacteria isolated from these samples, and biological screening of these extracts to identify chemical compounds with drug-like properties. These molecules will be developed further as drug leads in three indication areas – inflammation, infectious diseases, and CNS disorders, including epilepsy, using zebrafish behavioural assays.


PharmaSea partner Deeptek, based in Scotland, is providing new instrumentation for sampling from the ocean floor at depths of up to 9 kilometres. PharmaSea will also search for new microbes in other unique environments such as thermal vents and whale falls in collaboration with partners from New Zealand and Norway.


Scientists at KU Leuven’s lab will use bioassay and screening techniques to identify and isolate novel molecules or compounds for drug development. Potential candidates will then be subjected to molecular-level analysis such as micro-fractionation, mass spectroscopy and NMR spectroscopy by consortium scientists at the University of Aberdeen and University College Cork, respectively. Professor Marcel Jaspars, head of the Marine Biodiscovery Centre at the University of Aberdeen, is Project Leader of PharmaSea.


The researchers hope the neuroactive compounds and molecules isolated from the deep-sea samples can be developed into seizure-inhibiting drugs.


Esguerra said: “At the moment, over 30% of patients with epilepsy do not respond to currently available anti-epileptic drugs. Therefore their seizures remain uncontrolled, leading to high mortality or cognitive and locomotor impairments. Over the last several years, our laboratory has established a number of different zebrafish seizure models including drug-resistant ones. With the help of these models, we are quite hopeful that we will find a number of exciting new drug leads.”


ESA and Roscosmos Sign ExoMars Joint Partnership


The partners have agreed a balanced sharing of responsibilities for the different mission elements. ESA will provide the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and the Entry, Descent and Landing Demonstrator Module (EDM) in 2016, and the carrier and rover in 2018. Roscosmos will be responsible for the 2018 descent module and surface platform, and will provide launchers for both missions. Both partners will supply scientific instruments and will cooperate closely in the scientific exploitation of the missions.


The 2016 mission has two major ESA elements: TGO and EDM. TGO will search for evidence of methane and other atmospheric gases that could be signatures of active biological or geological processes. It will also serve as a data relay for the 2018 mission. EDM will land on Mars to prove key technologies for the 2018 mission.


ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain and Head of Roscosmos Vladimir Popovkin met at ESA Headquarters in Paris to seal ExoMars agreement


ESA and the Russian federal space agency, Roscosmos, have signed a formal agreement to work in partnership on the ExoMars programme towards the launch of two missions in 2016 and 2018. Establishing whether life ever existed on Mars is one of the outstanding scientific questions of our time and the highest scientific priority of the ExoMars programme.


In 2018, the ExoMars rover, to be provided by ESA, will search the planet’s surface for signs of life, past and present. It will be the first Mars rover able to drill to depths of 2m, collecting samples that have been shielded from the harsh conditions of the surface, where radiation and oxidants can destroy organic materials.


NASA will also deliver important contributions to ExoMars, including the Electra UHF radio package for TGO, and Mars Proximity Link telecom and engineering support to EDM.


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Picture credit: Kirsti Helland - University of Tromsø, Norway


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ESA: Ground to Space


Software Call


ESA is offering software developers the opportunity to use its new testbed in space. The robust nanosat will allow individuals, companies and institutions to try out pioneering software without the danger of losing a mission.


Satellites are so complex and costly that their controllers cannot afford to take risks. The need for reliability means that onboard and ground control software has not altered significantly in the past 20 years.


But the tiny Ops-Sat, a CubeSat combining commercial off-the-shelf technology and ESA expertise, is a chance to try out new ideas in space as early as 2015.


ESA will run some of its own experiments, but there's lots of time and effectively a blank canvas for the other experimenters who have game-changing ideas," says Ian Carnelli from ESA's General Studies Programme, supporting the mission.


Find out more info. 11 Foot-and-Mouth Vaccine Signals Huge Advance in Global Disease Control


Scientists have developed a new methodology to produce a vaccine for foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV). Because the vaccine is all synthetic, made up of tiny protein shells designed to trigger optimum immune response, it doesn’t rely on growing live infectious virus and is therefore much safer to produce.


Furthermore, these empty shells have been engineered to be more stable; making the vaccine much easier to store and reducing the need for a cold chain. Crucially, this new approach to making and stabilising vaccine could also impact on how viruses from the same family are fought, including polio.


This collaborative research was led by Professor David Stuart, Life Science Director at Diamond Light Source and MRC Professor of Structural Biology at the Department of Medicine University of


Oxford and Dr Bryan Charleston, Head of Livestock Viral Diseases Programme at The Pirbright Institute.


Dr Bryan Charleston said, “The FMDV epidemic in the UK in 2001 was disastrous and cost the economy billions of pounds in control measures and compensation. As a result of the outbreak the Royal Society recommended new approaches should be developed to control the virus should it happen again. This important work has been a direct result of the additional funding that was provided as a result of the 2001 outbreak to research this highly contagious disease. Using our detailed knowledge of the immune responses to FMDV in cattle we were able to define the characteristics that needed to be incorporated into the new vaccine platform to induce protection,” said Dr Bryan Charleston.


“What we have achieved here is close to the holy grail of foot-and-mouth vaccines. Unlike the traditional vaccines, there is no chance that the empty shell vaccine could revert to an infectious form.


This work will have a broad and enduring impact on vaccine development, and the technology should be transferable to other viruses from the same family, such as poliovirus and hand foot and mouth disease, a human virus which is currently endemic in South-East Asia,” added Professor Dave Stuart, Diamond Light Source and University of Oxford.


The work has principally been funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, UK (Defra) and the Wellcome Trust.


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