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https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-67176-2 Gifre-Renom, L., Carratalá, J.V., Parés, S. et al. Potential of MMP-9 based nanoparticles at optimizing the cow dry period: pulling apart the effects of MMP-9 and nanoparticles. Sci Rep 10, 11299 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-67176-2 Abstract The cow dry period is a non-milking interval where the mammary gland involutes and regenerates to guarantee an optimal milk production in the subsequent lactation. Important bottlenecks such as the high risk of intramammary infections complicate the process. Antibiotics have been routinely used as a preventive treatment but the concerns about potential antibiotic resistance open a new scenario in which alternative strategies have to be developed. Matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9

El receptor d'aquesta nanopartícula està expressat en 20 tipus de càncer i relacionat amb mal pronòstic, de manera que el fàrmac podria obrir una nova via terapèutica per a altres tumors. En la investigació han participat Antonio Villaverde i Esther Vázquez. La leucèmia mieloide aguda és una malaltia molt heterogènia el tractament habitual de la qual és molt agressiu i amb efectes secundaris severs. En la recerca d'un nou fàrmac més eficaç, investigadors del CIBER de Bioenginyeria, Biomaterials i Nanomedicina (CIBER-BBN) han demostrat l'eficàcia d’una nanopartícula de creació pròpia que bloqueja la disseminació de les cèl·lules leucèmiques en models animals de leucèmia mieloide aguda i que ataca directament les cèl·lules tumorals sense danyar les sanes, minimitzant els efectes adversos.

La Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) ha signat un acord de col·laboració i llicència d'actius de propietat industrial amb la companyia farmacèutica Servier per avançar en la investigació sobre la malaltia de Parkinson utilitzant el mètode per al cribratge de molècules petites desenvolupat pel professor Salvador Ventura, investigador de l'Institut de Biotecnologia i Biomedicina (IBB) i del Departament de Bioquímica i Biologia Molecular de la Universitat. En el marc d'aquest acord, els equips de l’IBB i Servier col·laboraran per identificar i desenvolupar compostos químics capaços de neutralitzar la patogenicitat de l’alfa-sinucleïna, una proteïna clau no només en la malaltia de Parkinson, també en altres malalties neurodegeneratives. "El descobriment de nous fàrmacs per tractar mala

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2001037020302919?via%3Dihub https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csbj.2020.05.026 Financial support:  Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) Abstract Protein aggregation is a widespread phenomenon that stems from the establishment of non-native intermolecular contacts resulting in protein precipitation. Despite its deleterious impact on fitness, protein aggregation is a generic property of polypeptide chains, indissociable from protein structure and function. Protein aggregation is behind the onset of neurodegenerative disorders and one of the serious obstacles in the production of protein-based therapeutics. The development of computational tools opened a new avenue to rationalize this phenomenon, enabling prediction of the aggregati

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smll.202001885 https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202001885 Abstract Nanoscale protein materials are highly convenient as vehicles for targeted drug delivery because of their structural and functional versatility. Selective binding to specific cell surface receptors and penetration into target cells require the use of targeting peptides. Such homing stretches should be incorporated to larger proteins that do not interact with body components, to prevent undesired drug release into nontarget organs. Because of their low interactivity with human body components and their tolerated immunogenicity, proteins derived from the human microbiome are appealing and fully biocompatible building blocks for the biofabrication of nonreactive, inert protein mater...

https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4923/12/5/450 Abstract Bacterial inclusion bodies (IBs) are protein-based nanoparticles of a few hundred nanometers formed during recombinant protein production processes in different bacterial hosts. IBs contain active protein in a mechanically stable nanostructured format that has been broadly characterized, showing promising potential in different fields such as tissue engineering, protein replacement therapies, cancer, and biotechnology. For immunomodulatory purposes, however, the interference of the format immunogenic properties—intrinsic to IBs—with the specific effects of the therapeutic protein is still an uncovered gap. For that, active and inactive forms of the catalytic domain of a matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9 and mutMMP-9, respectively

The BBVA foundation granted the NANO-ERT project in the 2019 call (Ayudas a Equipos de Investigación Científica en Biomedicina) to a consortium participated by Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (IBB-UAB) and ICN2.  The project ‘Development of new nanotechnological based Enzyme Replacement Therapy for Parkinson’s disease: restoration of lysosomal glucocerebrosidase activity through enzyme-polymer nanoconjugation of GBA (NANO-ERT)’ will be funded with € 124,872. The BBVA Foundation’s has selected 5 projects out of the 134 presented in the Biomedicine area. The NANO-ERT project was focused on the development of smart nanoformulations to achieve a new therapy against Parkinson's based on Enzimatic Replacement Therapy (ERT). The project, coordinated by

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16511-2 Abstract Mycoplasma genitalium is a human pathogen adhering to host target epithelial cells and causing urethritis, cervicitis and pelvic inflammatory disease. Essential for infectivity is a transmembrane adhesion complex called Nap comprising proteins P110 and P140. Here we report the crystal structure of P140 both alone and in complex with the N-terminal domain of P110. By cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and tomography (cryo-ET) we find closed and open Nap conformations, determined at 9.8 and 15 Å, respectively. Both crystal structures and the cryo-EM structure are found in a closed conformation, where the sialic acid binding site in P110 is occluded. By contrast, the cryo-ET structure shows an open conformation, where the binding

https://microbialcellfactories.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12934-020-01375-4 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12934-020-01375-4 Abstract Background Recombinant protein expression in bacteria often leads to the formation of intracellular insoluble protein deposits, a major bottleneck for the production of soluble and active products. However, in recent years, these bacterial protein aggregates, commonly known as inclusion bodies (IBs), have been shown to be a source of stable and active protein for biotechnological and biomedical applications. The formation of these functional IBs is usually facilitated by the fusion of aggregation-prone peptides or proteins to the protein of interest, leading to the formation of amyloid-like nanostructures, where the functional protein is embedded. ...

http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.255273.119 https://genome.cshlp.org/content/30/5/724.full Abstract Despite the interest in characterizing genomic variation, the presence of large repeats at the breakpoints hinders the analysis of many structural variants. This is especially problematic for inversions, since there is typically no gain or loss of DNA. Here, we tested novel linkage-based droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) assays to study 20 inversions ranging from 3.1 to 742 kb flanked by inverted repeats (IRs) up to 134 kb long. Of those, we validated 13 inversions predicted by different genome-wide techniques. In addition, we obtained new experimental human population information across 95 African, European, and East Asian individuals for 16 inversions, including four already validated...