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.

EMBL-EBI Agri-Tech Partnership

Transforming Agri-Tech R&D with actionable insights
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Decoding the Cancer Genome: A Patient-Centric Journey from Telomere to Telomere

Uncovering the complexity of genomic rearrangement bridging genetic insights with patient-centric approaches for enhanced diagnostic and prognostic.
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Decrypting Patient-Specific Cell Signaling: Network-Based Strategies for Personalized Insights

Decoding the rules governing context-specific human cell signalling responses through data-driven network-based strategies, ensuring optimised and tailored solutions for patients.
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Enhanced Data Interoperability: Leveraging the Ontology Lookup Service (OLS), and the Ontology Xref Service (OxO)

A modular ontology-based toolkit empowering seamless cross-domain semantic enrichment, data management and analysis.

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Empowering Agriculture, Aquaculture, Biodiversity Conservation and Genetic Innovation with Advanced Data Processing

Fostering genomic insights and biodiversity for a sustainable future through efficient data management, visualization, presentation, and seamless coordination and standardization.

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New Approaches for Vaccination: Modular pathogens analysis with safe, seamless, and user-friendly epidemiology methods
Enabling proactive pathogen management and informed interventions against infectious diseases with genomic epidemiology methods.
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Morphological Quantification of Bioimages for Advanced Phenotyping

Investigate living systems across scales with customized image quantification methods.

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QSPeed: Validation of Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (QSP) Models

Streamlining QSP Modelling with Curated Building-Blocks and Tailored Support

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Photo-Micropatterning – Creating functionalized cryoEM grids for studying cell architecture

A method for creating funcionalized cryoEM grids that allow to control cell shape and study cell architecture

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EasyGrid – A device for automated preparation and quality control of CyroEM samples

A prototype device that fully automates the procedure using in-line plasma treatment, picolitre drop dispensers, jet vitrification and automated cryo-storage.

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A comprehensive modular epigenome editing platform

Comprehensive modular epigenome editing platform for precise programming of specific chromatin modifications at target loci. It can serve as powerful precision therapeutics tool to restore appropriate epigenetic marks and gene activity for the amelioration of various diseases.

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Novel drug combinations against multi-resistant bacteria

The technology comprises novel drug combinations against multi-resistant bacteria and a platform to discover further combinations of antibiotics and non-antibiotic drugs that act synergetically against multi-resistant bacteria.

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“Sleeping Beauty” – A novel Sleeping Beauty transposase system for development of gene therapies

A novel Sleeping Beauty transposase system for the development of gene therapies, based on improved delivery of the recombinant transposase protein with several advantages such as increased safety, efficacy, stability, dose-dependency etc.

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Novel autotaxin inhibitors
The technology comprises a novel set of autotaxin inhibitors with several advantages over the state of the art, e.g. derivation from natural sources, increased non-competitive inhibitory activity, different conceivable application scenarios and administration routes.
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.Download PDF
“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.

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“Spacial omics” – 3D cell positioning by optical labelling

The technology enables tracing back the original position of a cell in a tissue by fluorescent labelling. It represents a central research tool and helps to reduce time and errors.

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Early pancancer biomarkers for liquid biopsy and computational tools for early tumor detection

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.

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“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.

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Method for ENO1-based compound screening to modulate glycolysis in cancer cells

The overexpression of ENO1 has been associated with multiple tumors and has therefore become an interesting target for the development of new compounds. We present a technology to screen for compounds that enable the modulation of glycolysis in cancer cells.

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Open Targets

Open Targets is an innovative, large-scale, multi-year public-private partnership that uses human genetics, genomics and other ‘omics data to systematically identify and prioritize the best targets to safely and effectively treat common and rare diseases.

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Enzymes for Green and Clean Synthesis and Bioremediation

Platforms for high-throughput virtual screening for novel enzyme reactions for synthesis and enzyme improvement

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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