Bio Screening Industry News

SASSARI, Italy & PRINCETON, N.J. - (Business Wire) ViroStatics, srl, a privately-held pharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of combination therapeutics in HIV/AIDS, virology, and other chronic diseases, today announced the formation of a Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). Chaired by Daniel Kuritzkes, MD, Director of AIDS Research, Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, the Board will provide the Company with valuable assistance in determining and managing the scientific mission as well as the prioritization and operation of its scientific and clinical activities.“Our Scientific Advisory Board is composed of six internationally renowned experts in the fields of clinical research, pharmacology, and immunology,” said Franco Lori, MD, President and CEO of Virostatics. “Each of them has made significant contributions to the scientific understanding of HIV/AIDS. We are confident that our Board members will provide ViroStatics with important insight and guidance as we continue the Phase II development of our lead combination product in HIV, VS411, as well as continuing our aggressive screening of new compounds to combat the global HIV/AIDS pandemic.”

The members of the Virostatics SAB are:

Daniel R. Kuritzkes, MD

Scientific Advisory Board Chairman

Daniel R. Kuritzkes, MD is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of AIDS Research, Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. He is Head of the Section of Retroviral Therapeutics for the Harvard Division of AIDS. Dr. Kuritzkes also serves as Vice Chair of the Executive Committee of the Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) and is the Principal Investigator of the Harvard Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Unit.

Charles Flexner, MD

Charles Flexner, MD is Professor of Medicine in the Divisions of Clinical Pharmacology and Infectious Diseases, and Professor of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. In addition, Dr. Flexner is Professor of International Health (Bloomberg School of Public Health) and Principal Investigator for the Johns Hopkins University AIDS Clinical Trials Unit.

Roy M. Gulick, MD, MPH

Roy “Trip” Gulick, MD, MPH, is Professor of Medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York and Director of the Cornell HIV Clinical Trials Unit. He also is a Board Member of the International AIDS Society-USA, and a member of the Panel on Clinical Practices for Treatment of HIV Infection of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Within the ACTG, he chairs the Steering Committee of the Optimization of Antiretroviral Therapy Committee.

Michael M. Lederman, MD

Michael M. Lederman, MD is the Scott R. Inkley Professor of Medicine and Professor of Molecular Biology/Microbiology, Pathology and Biomedical Ethics at the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland where he is director of the Center for AIDS Research. He is a member of the American Association of Immunologists, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the HIV Medicine Association.

Guido Silvestri, MD

Guido Silvestri, MD is an Associate Professor of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where he also serves as Director of Clinical Virology. Dr. Silvestri directs an NIH-funded research laboratory that conducts studies of AIDS pathogenesis and vaccines. Dr. Silvestri’s work has elucidated the mechanisms by which SIV infection of natural hosts is not followed by progression to AIDS, thus providing important insights on how HIV infection causes immunodeficiency in humans.

Mark A. Wainberg, PhD

Dr. Mark A. Wainberg is Director of the McGill University AIDS Centre and Professor of Medicine and of Microbiology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Dr. Wainberg, an internationally recognized scientist in the field of HIV/AIDS, has made many contributions to the study of the reverse transcriptase of HIV-1 in regard to basic mechanisms of action, inhibition by anti-viral drugs, drug resistance, and HIV replication. He served as President of the International AIDS Society between 1998 and 2000 and was Co-Chair of the XVI International AIDS Conference in 2006.

About Virostatics

Virostatics srl, an Italian pharmaceutical company with operations in Sassari and Pavia, Italy and Princeton, NJ, is committed to discovering and developing novel combination therapeutics to address significant medical needs in HIV/AIDS, chronic infections and related fields. The company is developing its lead product, VS411, as a fixed-dose combination of two drugs to not only decrease HIV replication but to also protect and conserve the immune system. VS411 has completed Phase I and is moving into a multinational Phase II development program. Virostatics has developed a proprietary screening methodology to rapidly and efficiently identify cytostatic agents with potential to control the over-stimulation of the immune system that is believed to drive the progression of HIV to AIDS. Virostatics is committed to expanding its pipeline and product portfolio by in-licensing early- and late-stage compounds and exploring co-development opportunities that fit the Company’s expertise in specialty pharmaceuticals and biopharmaceuticals in HIV/AIDS. For more information, visit virostatics.com.

Virostatics srl
Michael Stevens, PharmD
609-987-2305
Chief Development Officer
m.stevens@virostatics.com

Federal scientists are collaborating on a new approach to testing the toxicity of chemicals ranging from pesticides to household cleaners. They plan to use new automated high-speed cell tests to get more reliable data faster and more cheaply, and with less reliance on animal testing.

The National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are partners in the plan. NIH director Elias Zerhouni says scientists will apply technology developed by the two agencies to identify chemicals that might be harmful to humans.

“You could, in a battery of tests, end up with very specific molecular signatures that will be predictive of human toxicology, in ways that you just can’t do in animal testing today,” he said.

Scientists now rely heavily on animal tests to generate chemical toxicity data. That process is expensive, time-consuming and not always the best predictor of effects on humans says Francis Collins, director of the NIH National Human Genome Research Institute.

“There are differences between species. We are not rats and we are not even other primates, and so that [the] desire here is to see if we could do better,” she said. “Ultimately what you are looking for is [whether] this compound does damage to cells.”

The high-speed automated screening looks at the effects of chemical compounds on single human cells rather than on an entire laboratory animal. Researchers expect the new toxicology testing method will expand the number of chemicals tested and reduce the time, money and use of animals. NIH director Elias Zerhouni says it will also generate data more relevant to humans.

“What is being proposed here is to move the 20th century paradigm of testing of one compound at a time in many animals to going to the 21st Century paradigm [that] tests 5,000 to 10,000 compounds against 20,000 conditions in cells that are very specific to human toxicology,” he said.

Since NIH started the National Toxicology Program 30 years ago, it has tested 2,500 chemicals. Using the new automated strategy could get the same job done in a single afternoon.

John Butcher, associate director of the National Toxicology Program, explains that to check the reliability of this approach, scientists will first do a comparative analysis of the 2,500 chemicals previously tested on animals.

“And we can compare the output from these cell-based assays, in terms of whether these chemicals cause cancer, reproductive and developmental effects, neurological effects, immunotoxic effects and various other kinds of toxicity,” he said.

Butcher says the anticipated shift away from animal testing could take many years. Writing in Science Magazine, he says the agencies expect broader participation from public and private partners in the scientific community as the cell-based testing methods are refined and accepted.

A new company based on the Norwich Research Park has joined the fight against MRSA and cancer.

Researchers at the John Innes Centre near Norwich have launched a new company, Inspiralis, based around their expertise in ‘DNA topoisomerases’.

These are a group of enzymes that help DNA molecules to unravel and wind up properly and not to become tangled during replication.

Inspiralis co-founder Nicolas Burton said: “DNA becomes tangled as a result of various cellular processes, such as replication, which ultimately stops these processes continuing. DNA topoisomerases untangle it. Without them, cells die.”

A number of powerful antibiotics and key anti-cancer drugs act by inhibiting topoisomerases.

In cancer, cells rapidly divide in an uncontrolled manner and topoisomerase inhibitors can block this uncontrolled division.

The search is now on for new ways of inhibiting topoisomerases.

Inspiralis makes a range of products targeted at the pharmaceutical industry to enable drug-discovery work in this area including topoisomerase enzymes themselves as well as associated products.

A new high-throughput test, developed recently in the laboratory of Prof Tony Maxwell of the John Innes Centre and co-founder of Inspiralis, will also provide a huge advance on the standard gel-based screening method for topoisomerase inhibitors.

Inspiralis will develop the technique further as well as offering screening services to companies.

“The test will potentially allow millions of compounds to be screened for activity rather than just hundreds,” said Dr Burton.

The technology can now be accessed as a service or as a kit helping pharmaceutical companies and academics to screen for new and better cancer drugs and antibiotics.

“Topoisomerase inhibitors are key targets for new drug development”, said Alison Howells, a co-founder of Inspiralis.

“We can test potential new drugs against topoisomerases as well as help discover new inhibitors as a first step to developing brand new drugs.”

Inspiralis is based at the Norwich Bio-Incubator at JIC and was founded with backing from the Iceni fund, a private investor, and the John Innes Centre.

The high-throughput test is patented by JIC’s and BBSRC’s technology transfer company, Plant Biosciences, and non-exclusive licenses have already been granted to pharmaceutical companies to utilise the equipment.

A new company has joined the fight against MRSA and cancer. Researchers at the John Innes Centre (Norwich) have launched a new company, Inspiralis Ltd, based around their expertise in DNA topoisomerases – a group of enzymes that help DNA molecules to unravel and wind up properly and not to become tangled during replication.

“DNA becomes tangled as a result of various cellular processes, such as replication, which ultimately stops these processes continuing. DNA topoisomerases untangle it. Without them cells die”, says Inspiralis co-founder Dr Nicolas Burton.

Topoisomerases are already targets for several drugs, including anti-tumour drugs and antibiotics, such as ciprofloxacin – the anti-anthrax drug. The search is now on for new ways of inhibiting them. Inspiralis Ltd make a range of products targeted to the pharmaceutical industry to enable drug-discovery work in this area including topoisomerase enzymes themselves as well as associated products.

A new high-throughput assay, developed recently in the laboratory of Prof. Tony Maxwell of the John Innes Centre (and co-founder of Inspiralis), will also provide a huge advance on the standard gel-based screening method for topoisomerase inhibitors. Inspiralis Ltd will develop the technique further as well as offering screening services to companies. “The assay will potentially allow millions of compounds to be screened for activity rather than just hundreds”, says Dr Burton.

The technology can now be accessed as a service or as a kit helping pharmaceutical companies and academics to screen for new and better cancer drugs and antibiotics.

Some powerful antibiotics and key anti-cancer drugs act by inhibiting topoisomerases. In cancer, cells rapidly divide in an uncontrolled manner and topoisomerase inhibitors can block this uncontrolled cell division.

“Topoisomerase inhibitors are key targets for new drug development”, says Mrs Alison Howells (co-founder). “We can test potential new drugs against topoisomerases as well as help discover new inhibitors as a first step to developing brand new drugs”.

Inspiralis is based at the Norwich Bio-Incubator at JIC and was founded with backing from the ICENI fund, a private investor and the John Innes Centre.

The high-throughput assay is patented by JIC’s and BBSRC’s technology transfer company, Plant Biosciences Ltd, and non-exclusive licenses have already been granted to pharmaceutical companies.

Labcyte announced the introduction of the latest member of its acoustic dispensing family, the Echo® 520 liquid handler, which was developed for the medium-throughput laboratory. The 520 system provides high accuracy and precision transfers of a wide variety of solutions at an appropriate price for the laboratory that needs to transfer as many as 100,000 solutions per day. Like other Labcyte Echo liquid handlers, the Echo 520 improves data quality by avoiding loss of sample by adsorption onto tips and intermediate plates. This system uses the same acoustic droplet ejection (ADE) technology that has enabled the leading pharmaceutical companies to reduce the volume of their assays while obtaining more reliable data. The rapid ejection of 2.5 nL droplets facilitates the use of 96-, 384-, 1536- and 3456-well assay plates.

“The Echo 520 liquid handler will bring our ADE technology to a wider number of users,” said CEO, Dr. Elaine J. Heron. “This new addition to the product line provides the best-in-the-industry precision and accuracy at a lower price. The Echo 520 is fully compatible with Labcyte software for cherry picking and setting up flexible dose-response assay plates. It, like the 550 and 555 systems, is immediately and fully compatible with lab automation.

“This new product makes the advantages of ADE accessible to the laboratory which could not afford and did not need the high throughput of our 550 and 555 systems. And these laboratories can feel comfortable knowing that if their throughput needs increase, they can upgrade the 520 to higher throughput versions,” said Heron.

As the leader in acoustic droplet ejection, Labcyte offers direct support in North America, Europe and Japan for the Echo 520 and our other systems.  Additionally, the Labcyte software for cherry picking and flexible dose-response assays optimally exploits the many advantages of precise low nanoliter liquid transfer.  Like other Labcyte systems, the Echo 520 can be used to transfer a wide variety of common aqueous buffers used in protein and nucleic acid assays, as well as DMSO for drug compound management and screening

To see a video of acoustic droplet formation, please visit
http://www.labcyte.com/media/2nL.mpeg
Labcyte Inc., headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, is the world leader in providing acoustic droplet ejection technology for pharmaceutical and life science applications. The award-winning Echo 500 series liquid handlers and Portrait 630 reagent multi-spotters are used in nine of the 10 largest pharmaceutical companies, as well as in leading academic and research institutions and contract research organizations worldwide. The Labcyte acoustic droplet ejection technology has broad applications including compound management, assays, arraying, particle manufacturing, imaging mass spectrometry, and live-cell transfer. Labcyte also provides a range of unique microplate consumables. Labcyte has 29 issued U.S. patents, 3 issued European patents and additional international filings. For more information, visit www.labcyte.com

Madison, Wis. - Promega Corp., a provider of life science solutions, has formed an agreement with San Francisco-based Multispan Inc. to co-develop tools for the drug-related screening of protein receptors.

The agreement will team Promega’s line of bioluminescent technologies with Multispan’s line of G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) to increase the efficiency of testing for drugs that work on the receptors.
GPCRs, which transmit chemical signals into multiple types of cells, are involved in processes like the regulation of mood, the nervous system, and the immune system. They are among the most widely targeted receptors by pharmaceutical companies.

Promega’s bioluminescent technologies typically are used to study drug targets such as protein and nuclear hormone receptors. The technology also profiles small molecule compounds and assesses the viability and toxicity of various drugs on those targets.

John Watson, marketing director of pharma/biotech at Promega, said in a release that the agreement will provide solutions for scientists researching new drugs, reducing the assay development time on these drugs from months to days.

Research conducted at Birmingham’s Southern Research Institute helped develop a system to identify drugs with the ability to fight the virus that causes AIDS.

Trana Discovery, a North Carolina-based drug discovery technology company, worked with Southern Research to create a screening system to identify drugs that inhibit HIV replication.

The system can be used by pharmaceutical companies to “rapidly and efficiently screen vast libraries of compounds” to help in the treatment of AIDS patients, said Trana CEO Steve Peterson.

The deadly Ebola virus, an emerging public health concern in Africa and a potential biological weapon, ranks among the most feared of exotic pathogens.

Due to its virulent nature, and because no vaccines or treatments are available, scientists studying the agent have had to work under the most stringent biocontainment protocols, limiting research to a few highly specialized labs and hampering the ability of scientists to develop countermeasures.

Now, however, a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has figured out a way to genetically disarm the virus, effectively confining it to a set of specialized cells and making the agent safe to study under conditions far less stringent than those currently imposed.

“We wanted to make biologically contained Ebola virus,” explains Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a professor of pathobiological sciences in the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine and the senior author of a paper describing the system for containing the virus published today (Jan. 21, 2008) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “This is a great system.”

The Ebola virus first emerged in 1976 with outbreaks in Sudan and Zaire. There are several strains of the virus, which causes hemorrhagic fever and during outbreaks kills anywhere from 50-90 percent of its human victims.

At present, research on live Ebola virus is confined to the very highest level of biosafety, known as Biosafety Level 4 (BSL 4). Because such laboratories are rare, small and very expensive, basic research that is the basis for any potential drugs or vaccines to thwart the virus has been limited to perhaps half a dozen labs worldwide. The system devised by Kawaoka and his colleagues could provide a way to greatly expand studies of the pathogen and speed the development of countermeasures.

Taming Ebola virus, according to the new study, depends on a single gene known as VP30. Like most viruses, Ebola is a genetic pauper. It has only eight genes and depends on host cells to provide much of the molecular machinery to make it a successful pathogen. The virus’s VP30 gene makes a protein that enables it to replicate in host cells. Without the protein, the virus cannot grow.

“The altered virus does not grow in any normal cells,” says Kawaoka. “We made cells that express the VP30 protein and the virus can grow in those cells because the missing protein is provided by the cell.”

It took years, Kawaoka explains, to find which viral protein was not toxic to cells and could thus be used to develop a system, using monkey kidney cells, to confine the virus.

And Kawaoka, an internationally noted virologist, is convinced of the safety of the new system: “We did this work in a BSL 4, and the altered cells didn’t produce any infectious virus after many passages or replication cycles.”

With the exception that it is unable to grow in anything but cells engineered to express the VP30 protein, the virus is identical to the pathogen found in the wild, making it ideal for studies of basic biology, vaccine development and screening for antiviral compounds.

“This system can be used for drug screening and for vaccine production,” Kawaoka says, noting that getting the equipment and compounds for such work into a BSL 4 lab is extremely difficult. “High throughput screening (for drugs) in a BSL 4 is almost impossible.”

Currently, live Ebola virus can be studied only in a BSL 4 laboratory. Any proposal to permit studying the pathogen in lower safety level labs is certain to generate controversy.

But according to Kawaoka, making the agent available for study to a broader cross section of science is essential for thwarting the virus that kills a high percentage of its victims because there is now no defense against it. A new strain of Ebola, which so far has emerged only in remote areas of the world, was recently identified in Uganda and has killed at least 40 people.

“This is an emerging virus and it’s highly lethal,” Kawaoka says. “But because of the BSL 4 requirement, knowledge of this virus is limited.”

An unexpected finding turned out to be a clue leading researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to propose a new treatment approach for Niemann-Pick disease, a rare, deadly neurodegenerative disorder. To overcome the genetic defect in Niemann-Pick disease, the researchers suggest that chemical compounds could potentially “chaperone” mutant protein molecules through the cell’s quality control machinery. And they believe the approach also could be useful for more common diseases — such as cystic fibrosis — that stem from a similar type of defect.

Gelsthorpe ME, Baumann N, Millard E, Gale SE, Langmade SJ, Schaffer JE, Ory DS. NPC1 I106T mutant encodes a functional protein that is selected for ER-associated degradation due to protein misfolding. Journal of Biological Chemistry Jan. 23, 2008 (advance online publication).

Funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation supported this research.

Washington University School of Medicine’s 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient care institutions in the nation, currently ranked fourth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare. Daniel S. Ory, M.D., associate professor of medicine, and colleagues in the Center for Cardiovascular Research originally began to study Niemann-Pick type C disease because of its link to cholesterol metabolism — the genetic abnormality at the root of the disease serves as a tool for investigating how cholesterol moves about in cells.

Niemann-Pick type C, the rarest form of Niemann-Pick disease, usually affects school-aged children, but the disease may occur at any time from early infancy to adulthood. Symptoms may include unsteadiness of gait, clumsiness, slurred speech, learning difficulties, progressive intellectual decline, seizures and tremors. Niemann-Pick type C disease is fatal, and no life-extending treatment exists.

As the result of their latest research, Ory and colleagues want to follow up with an investigation of a different treatment modality than has previously been proposed. Prior avenues of treatment research emphasized using gene therapy to repair the genetic defect, but such an approach is fraught with numerous difficulties. Ory’s group believes that Niemann-Pick type C and other diseases like it might be treated more readily with chemical compounds able to compensate for the effect of the disease’s underlying genetic mutation.

Niemann-Pick type C disease is a recessive inherited trait that can originate in one of more than 200 different mutations in the NPC1 gene, which lies on chromosome 18. The mutations lead to production of abnormal NPC1 protein. Normally, NPC1 protein plays an essential role in moving cholesterol out of cells, and if it doesn’t function, cholesterol and other lipids accumulate.

Most scientists assumed that Niemann-Pick type C mutations produced NPC1 protein that didn’t work correctly. So when a routine test in the Ory lab of a mutated NPC1 protein showed that the protein was in fact active in living cells, the researchers did a double take.

“It is unequivocal that the mutation causes disease in human patients,” says Ory, also associate professor of cell biology and physiology. “Yet the mutated protein seemed functional when we introduced it into cells.”

When they looked for the explanation for this aberration, Ory and colleagues found that a small proportion of the mutant protein actually could do the job of normal NPC1 protein. It turned out that the mutation caused most newly minted NPC1 protein molecules to fold into the wrong shape or to assume their final shape slowly so that the cell’s quality control checkpoints rejected them. But some of the mutant protein molecules assumed the correct shape and made it to their proper destination.

That suggested to the team that Niemann-Pick type C disease possibly could be treated with chemicals that assist the mutant proteins produced in patients. Ory refers to these as chemical chaperones and indicates this approach could help the large NPC1 proteins during the process of folding their long, complex chains so that more of the mutant proteins fold properly and pass through the cell’s quality control checkpoints.

In collaboration with the National Institutes of Health Chemical Genomics Center, Ory will next screen more than 200,000 compounds to see which ones increase the amount of mutant NPC1 that folds into a functional form.

“The screening can be done in as little as two weeks because the facility in Rockville, Md., has a huge library of compounds and state-of-the-art robotic equipment that can perform the tests at very high speed,” Ory explains. “Then we will bring the compounds that show a positive effect to our laboratory and validate them on cell lines from Niemann-Pick patients. After that we will work with a pharmaceutical partner to take the ones that are effective in cells and make sure they will be safe and effective in people.”

Although Niemann-Pick disorders are rare, affecting fewer than 2,000 people worldwide, Ory says that it is likely the chemical chaperone approach to therapy could also be useful for other disorders caused by genetic mutations that lead to protein misfolding. This includes cystic fibrosis, a lung and digestive system disorder that affects 70,000 children and adults around the world.

Scientists at Royal Holloway, University of London have joined forces with CABI to establish a facility to screen for potential new antibiotics. The aim of the project is to build a highly focused natural products drug discovery operation that will address the urgent need for bringing new antibiotic compounds to market.

Since their discovery, antibiotics and other antimicrobial agents have saved millions of lives and significantly eased patients’ suffering. However, over time, micro-organisms have developed resistance to existing antibiotics making infections difficult, if not impossible, to treat. The recent appearance of multiple-resistant bacterial infections has radically increased the necessity for new antibiotic discovery.

As part of a three-year programme, the joint research facility will utilise CABI’s unique collection of fungi gathered from all parts of the world, to screen for potential new antibiotics. Although the first natural product antibiotic to be used clinically, penicillin, was isolated from a fungus, these organisms have not been as extensively evaluated as bacteria as sources of new drugs for treating infections and so there is great potential for discovery in CABI’s 28,000 organism collection.

Furthermore, over the past 25 years companies have concentrated on using chemistry-based approaches to modify recognised antibiotic structures. However, the use of natural products, from fungi, which have evolved from millions of years of competition against bacteria is likely to lead to products with new modes of antibiotic action that disease-causing bacteria cannot counter. This new joint facility aims to harness these natural chemical compounds from fungi to offer potential new antibiotics. Similarly, compounds that have proven health benefits when taken in the diet (so-called nutraceuticals) are also likely to be found in fungi and the new joint research facility will also screen the collection for new nutraceuticals.

Professor Peter Bramley and Dr Paul Fraser in the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway and Dr Trevor Nicholls, CEO and Dr Joan Kelley Executive Director of CABI are managing the project. Professor Bramley and Dr Fraser’s extensive experience in molecular biology and analytical methodologies will be applied to state-of-the-art screening techniques for the discovery of new compounds and the manipulation, recombination and expression of their biosynthetic pathways to bioengineer new, related compounds. Dr Nicholls’ experience in the biotechnology industry and Dr Kelley’s expertise and knowledge of mycology and biodiversity will direct the research to identify strains which are likely to be more biochemically diverse and commercially valuable for screening.

Professor Bramley commented, “This joint initiative lays the foundations for a long term collaboration with potential strategic benefits, both research and commercial. A major focus will be the search for new antibiotics and nutraceuticals, for which there is now increasing commercial, nutritional and medical demand.”

Dr Trevor Nicholls, CEO CABI added, “This is a really exciting partnership and we are looking forward to working with the expertise of the scientists at Royal Holloway. We are hopeful that our collaboration will prove the winning formula for discovering new drugs to fight cancers, diseases and resistant strains of infections such as MRSA.”

The joint facility is located in the Royal Holloway’s School of Biosciences and houses a new state-of-the-art mass spectrometer. As part of this collaboration, two technicians will be employed and a PhD studentship funded.

Royal Holloway has also obtained early stage seed fund investment from the London Development Agency backed WestFocus PARK Fund, to commercialise any potential new discoveries emerging from this project. The project team will work closely with the Research & Enterprise department at Royal Holloway to protect, manage and exploit any new intellectual property.

About CABI

CABI is a not-for-profit organisation that provides information and applying scientific expertise to solve problems in agriculture and the environment. Its mission and direction is influenced by its 45 member countries who help guide the activities undertaken as a business. These include scientific publishing, projects and consultancy, information for development and mycological services.