Two teams from the Bristol BioDesign Institute have been awarded funding from the UKRI – BBSRC Engineering Biology Technology Mission Fund call:
CYBER: Cyanobacteria Engineering for Restoring Environments (Principal Investigator: Dr Thomas Gorochowski)
CYBER aims to develop the foundational multidisciplinary tools needed to de-risk environmentally focused engineering biology and ultimately support its future deployment into real-world ecosystems. It brings together researchers from the Universities of Bristol (lead), Newcastle and Edinburgh, plus the National Measurements Laboratory (NML), NIST, Basecamp, Cultivarium, Bactobio, and Gitlife to improve the trustworthiness of engineered biology for environmental applications.
Haemotoxic and cytotoxic snake venom metalloproteinases – production, enzymatic specificity, snakebite treatment, and biomedical use (Principal Investigator: Prof Christiane Berger-Schaffitzel)
The team will establish robust production of snake venom metalloproteinase (SVMPs) toxins ready for use to develop next generation toxin-specific therapies for tackling snakebite envenoming. SVMPs also exhibit functional specificities desirable for biomedical purposes, as several are used as the basis for anti-platelet drugs or standards for the clinical diagnosis of bleeding disorders. The team will use recombinant, native and engineered toxins to identify new platelet inhibitors that block specific platelet surface receptors that are known drug targets. The project team includes ADDovenom colleagues Professor Nick Casewell (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine) as Co-I, and Johara Stringari (University of Bristol) as Researcher Co-I.