Date: 2013-03-19
Type of information: Grant
Company: Hybrigenics (France)
Investors:
Amount: € 0.6 million
Funding type: grant
Planned used: Hybrigenics Services will receive €0.6m over four years to perform yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) screens on selected proteins strongly suspected to be involved in late-onset Alzheimer disease, and blow up extensive protein interaction maps around them. This expanded network information will be crossed with data from human genome-wide genetic association studies to validate the relevance of susceptibility genes for AD.
Others: The french biopharmaceutical company Hybrigenics has announced the participation of Hybrigenics Services, its subsidiary specialized in protein interactions, to the European FP7 research project called AgedBrainSYSBIO. This project is coordinated by Prof. Michel Simonneau, an expert in functional genomics applied to neurosciences from Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris.
The AgedBrainSYSBIO project is focused on systems biology of synapse proteins and ageing. This project is based on the integration of available transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics data, addition of relevant novel sets of data, their modeling and experimental testing in both human, mouse and drosophila. The concept is to identify subsets of pathways with two unique druggable hallmarks: the validation of interactions occurring locally in subregions of neurons and a human and/or primate accelerated evolutionary signature. Several interacting approaches will be used:
· the identification of interacting protein networks from recent Late-Onset Alzheimer Disease- Genome Wide Association Studies (LOAD-GWAS) data,
· the experimental validation of interconnected networks working in subregion of a neuron (such as dendrites and dendritic spines),
· the inclusion of these experimentally validated networks in larger networks obtained from available databases to extend possible protein interactions,
· the identification of human and/or primate positive selection either in coding or in regulatory gene sequences,
· the manipulation of these human and/or primate accelerated evolutionary interacting proteins in human neurons derived from induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs) and modeling prediction challenged in drosophila and novel mouse transgenic models
This work will finally allow the validation of new druggable targets and markers as a proof-of-concept towards the prevention and cure of aging cognitive defects.
This multidisciplinary consortium assembles 14 academic and industrial research teams from Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Israel, United Kingdom and Switzerland. Four european SME will bring their complementary expertise. Quretec (Estonia) will be a key partner for data management solutions and bioinformatics data analyses. Hybrigenics (France), a leader in comparative proteomics and protein-protein interaction analyses, will perform yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) screens on selected proteins strongly suspected to be involved in late-onset Alzheimer disease, and blow up extensive protein interaction maps around them. Genebridges (Germany) is marketing novel strategies for DNA engineering in mammalian cells and reMYND (Belgium) is a leader for development of protein misfolding-modifying treatments against late-onset Alzheimer disease .
Therapeutic area: Neurodegenerative diseases
