Final Report Summary - PRISM (Phospholipid and Glycolipid Recognition, Interactions and Structures by Magnetic Resonance)
The overall objective of the PRISM project is to understand how membranes are specifically recognised and modulate protein function. The underlying goal is to help bridge the technical and knowledge divide between proteomics and lipidomics using key functional paradigms.
The development of multidisciplinary studies and versatile tools to connect these fields was intended to enable translation of discoveries of lipid functions and associated protein mechanisms into exploitable insights, with most drug targets being proteins residing in lipid environments. It was felt that the European pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors in particular would benefit from technological advances that make accessible new membrane associated targets for therapeutic development.
We recognised that the EU has entered a period of unprecedented economic opportunity due to biomedical advances and the wealth of 'omics' knowledge. However moving beyond this realisation requires intensified communication and skills exchange between fields as well as overcoming technical barriers including sample production, handling, screening and analysis. PRISM brought leading experts in membrane biology and biochemistry together with NMR spectroscopists in order to focus on key problems in the field of membrane protein research and supersede rate-limiting barriers.
The achievements from the PRISM project include development of novel tools and methods for membrane protein analysis, new structures and dynamical features of membrane proteins, and software tools for predicting membrane protein assembly structures and binding sites. The products of the PRISM consortium include four patents, over fifty publications, and over one hundred conference presentations. The consortium has taken advice on exploitation routes, and has a set of licensing agreements in place to distribute new products to global markets. The PRISM external advisory group includes SME directors and industry representatives and along with university technology transfer offices will continue to provide guidance on exploitation.
PRISM has developed a range of experimental and computational tools for understanding protein structures in terms of the lipids they recognise and for calculating protein-lipid-micelle structures. In addition to providing a novel computational approach illuminating protein-lipid interactions at the atomic level, PRISM has yielded multistep binding mechanisms for biomolecular systems that adapt and respond to their molecular environments. This has long-term potential for applications such as drugs that act specifically on protein-lipid interfaces, and biochemicals agents which regulate the assembly and subcellular localisation of proteins in vivo.
The development of multidisciplinary studies and versatile tools to connect these fields was intended to enable translation of discoveries of lipid functions and associated protein mechanisms into exploitable insights, with most drug targets being proteins residing in lipid environments. It was felt that the European pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors in particular would benefit from technological advances that make accessible new membrane associated targets for therapeutic development.
We recognised that the EU has entered a period of unprecedented economic opportunity due to biomedical advances and the wealth of 'omics' knowledge. However moving beyond this realisation requires intensified communication and skills exchange between fields as well as overcoming technical barriers including sample production, handling, screening and analysis. PRISM brought leading experts in membrane biology and biochemistry together with NMR spectroscopists in order to focus on key problems in the field of membrane protein research and supersede rate-limiting barriers.
The achievements from the PRISM project include development of novel tools and methods for membrane protein analysis, new structures and dynamical features of membrane proteins, and software tools for predicting membrane protein assembly structures and binding sites. The products of the PRISM consortium include four patents, over fifty publications, and over one hundred conference presentations. The consortium has taken advice on exploitation routes, and has a set of licensing agreements in place to distribute new products to global markets. The PRISM external advisory group includes SME directors and industry representatives and along with university technology transfer offices will continue to provide guidance on exploitation.
PRISM has developed a range of experimental and computational tools for understanding protein structures in terms of the lipids they recognise and for calculating protein-lipid-micelle structures. In addition to providing a novel computational approach illuminating protein-lipid interactions at the atomic level, PRISM has yielded multistep binding mechanisms for biomolecular systems that adapt and respond to their molecular environments. This has long-term potential for applications such as drugs that act specifically on protein-lipid interfaces, and biochemicals agents which regulate the assembly and subcellular localisation of proteins in vivo.
