Technologies
Tools, Methods & Assays
As Europe’s flagship laboratory for molecular biology, EMBL-inventions are scattered across the whole range of molecular biology research.
The technologies cover areas including protein expression tools, nanotechnology, research tools & platforms, kit-ready assays, diagnostic tools and targets that can be further developed into future drugs.
Decoding the Cancer Genome: A Patient-Centric Journey from Telomere to Telomere
Decrypting Patient-Specific Cell Signaling: Network-Based Strategies for Personalized Insights
Enhanced Data Interoperability: Leveraging the Ontology Lookup Service (OLS), and the Ontology Xref Service (OxO)
Empowering Agriculture, Aquaculture, Biodiversity Conservation and Genetic Innovation with Advanced Data Processing
New Approaches for Vaccination: Modular pathogens analysis with safe, seamless, and user-friendly epidemiology methods
Morphological Quantification of Bioimages for Advanced Phenotyping
QSPeed: Validation of Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (QSP) Models
Photo-Micropatterning – Creating functionalized cryoEM grids for studying cell architecture
EasyGrid – A device for automated preparation and quality control of CyroEM samples
A comprehensive modular epigenome editing platform
Novel drug combinations against multi-resistant bacteria
“Sleeping Beauty” – A novel Sleeping Beauty transposase system for development of gene therapies
Novel autotaxin inhibitors
One compound was developed further and characterized comprehensively.
Autotaxin inhibitors might be applied for the treatment of various diseases such as inflammatory diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, multiple sclerosis, atherosclerosis, cancer etc.
“SPION-CCPMs” – Iron nanoparticles as adjuvant lung cancer therapeutic
Novel iron-loaded nanoparticles (super-paramagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles-loaded core cross-linked polymeric micelles; SPION-CCPMs) improve iron delivery and trigger increased inflammatory responses, which is beneficiary for the treatment of several diseases. In lung cancer models (in vitro and in vivo), SPION-CCPMs induced an anti-tumor phenotype in macrophages, resulting in oxidative stress and the destruction of cancer cells.
“Spacial omics” – 3D cell positioning by optical labelling
Pan-cancer biomarkers for early tumor detection via liquid biopsy
A new type of telomere fusion was found that is not present in the blood of healthy donors but well detectable in the blood of cancer patients. The technology comprises computational tools for the reliable identification of these fusions. Additionally, predictive models have been established that allow for the detection of the presence of a tumor using sequencing data from a blood sample.
“scTRIP” – Single Cell Tri-Channel Processing
A technology for the systematic, detailed and accurate detection of structural DNA variations (e.g. deletions, duplications etc.), which includes all known forms of karyotypic abnormality in single cells. The technology can help to better understand disease, enable precision medicine approaches, and allows for quality control in gene and cell therapy approaches.
Method for ENO1-based compound screening to modulate glycolysis in cancer cells
Open Targets
Enzymes for Green and Clean Synthesis and Bioremediation
“ESPRIT” – A systematic approach for generating soluble protein variants
Proteins often express insolubly which severely limits their usefulness in areas such as structural analysis by crystallography and NMR. Several systems have been described that aim to identify soluble protein variants generated by random mutagenesis or truncation. These methods usually involve fusion of a C-terminal “solubility reporter” (e.g. GFP, CAT or beta galactosidase). The tag used in the methods described above are large and thus enhance the solubility profile of the fusion product. The solubility of the thus created fusion protein is highly dependent on the solubility phenotype of the tag used. By using a smaller tag the solubility influence of the tag is reduced leading to a reduction of false positives.
Cell-based method for the analysis of protein-protein interactions
Protein-protein interactions are crucial for virtually all cellular processes. Therefore analysis of such interactions is becoming increasingly important in molecular biology, biochemistry and computational biology. Furthermore, disturbed protein-protein interactions can contribute to diseases rendering the identification of protein-protein interaction inhibitors highly desirable in drug discovery. Traditional technologies used for analysis of protein-protein interactions share the major drawback that the experimental set-up is highly artificial, questioning the physiological relevance of such interactions in vivo. The technology presented here allows for reliable analysis of intracellular protein-protein interactions based on a translocation principle.
Novel biomarkers for the detection of testicular carcinoma in situ and derived cancers in human samples
Virtually all testicular cancers originate from the same precursor, the carcinoma in situ (CIS) cell. If left untreated, CIS will invariably progress into testicular cancer. Unfortunately, the disease is rarely diagnosed at this asymptomatic stage, since it hitherto has required a testicular biopsy to identify CIS. The aim of the current work is to develop and validate a non-invasive diagnostic test for early detection of testicular cancer based on identification of pre-invasive CIS cells in semen samples.
Phasing macromolecular structures by UV-induced damage
This invention relates to a novel method to phase macromolecular crystal structures using damage induced by UV radiation (UV-RIP). Compared to existing techniques this method shows the advantage that it can be performed on a single crystal of the native protein and introduces only specific changes. The technology can be used independently of a synchrotron.