Research & Development Request

Spain

A Spanish Health Research Institute is working on a proposal under H2020: NMBP-13-2017. It is looking for partners under a research cooperation agreement to designed modular nanobiotechnological tools to detect and interfere with the key signaling pathway of heart fibrosis in vivo. The project aims to develop new biotechnological fluorescent nanocluster stabilizing modules for detection and imaging to target a molecule recently involved in the progression of pathologycal fibrosis.

A Spanish Health Research Institute working in the field of biomedical sciences for improving patient care is looking for companies or startups to develop a project H2020 under a research cooperation agreement.
This project aims to develop new biotechnological tools for relevant applications in biomedicine by linking the expertise of groups from molecular biotechnology, molecular mechanisms of disease, small companies and hospitals for clinical application.Thus, it is clearly oriented to the Health Challenge.
From the protein engineering and biotechnology perspective,the project aims to exploit the potential of modular repeat protein-based structures to design tailored tools by the combination of functionalities. For this purpose, the Research Institute aims to design and rationally assemble a variety of functional structures using simple building blocks with specified properties. Mostly two types of modules will be developed based on the same protein unit:
1. Fluorescent nanocluster stabilizing modules for detection and imaging;
2.Protein recognition modules for specific targeting, detection,and inhibition.
Since the modules are based on the same structural scaffold the R&D Institution hypothesizes that they can be fused into single proteins to form multifunctional molecular tools. Second generation designs will consider the coupling between the different functionalities, i.e.the ligand recognition and the fluorescent signal, to produce specific sensors for in vitro and in vivo tracking. Finally, the Research Institute will implement these tools into solid materials and combine them with advanced optical sensing technologies,for ex-vivo detection platforms.
From the prespective of the molecular mechanisms of cardiac fibrosis, the project aims to unravel key elements and presents novel therapeutic alternatives and detection tools. For this purpose, the Health Research Institute aims to target a molecule recently involved in the progression of disease. A disease-like pathological remodeling is present on hearts that had suffered a cardiac injury, most of them showing uncontrolled fibrotic events with an excess of extracellular matrix accumulation that can cause heart failure in the long term. The strategies are focused on reducing the pathological heart remodeling by the use of anti-fibrotic molecules. This could be extent to other fibrotic deseases. Strategies to block directly the main pro-fibrotic molecule (TGFβ) cause important side effects that lead to life threatening complications. New tools to develop active anti-fibrotic drugs would be one step toward the absence of anti-fibrotic treatments. Alternative solutions could implicate heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) which stabilizes TGFβ receptor TGFβRI. Inhibition of Hsp90 causes TGFβRI destabilization without altering TGFβ molecule,and leads to loss of function of TGFβ cascade and reduction of collagen. The Health Research Institute pursues to get the noninvasive detection of human fibrotic damage at smaller scale with mice-adapted models and using Hsp90 KO mice together with promising anti-fibrotic molecule with the possibility of generating a biomarker for fibrotic events and procede to the translation into clinic. The global aim is the generation of biotechnological tools that target a key component of the disease reducing and detecting the degree of pathological fibrosis. This objective can only be tackled in a multidisciplinary way, as presented in this proposal, including the design of new multifunctional tools, the identification and understanding of key pathways related to disease, and the proof of concept application of the tools to target those pathways, including the inhibition and detection in vitro, in vivo and ex-vivo.

H2020 call: NMBP-13-2017 Cross-cutting KETs for diagnostics at the point-of-care.
Call deadline: 19/1/2017
Deadline for EoIs: 12/12/2016

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