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Enhancing biological drug production through protein secretion

Objective

Biotherapeutics are bio-materials, which are used among others to treat cancer, diabetes, and rare diseases. It is expected that these medicines will make up half of the medicines in future. Already now, 350 million patients are treated with biotherapeutics, produced from proteins. The proteins that are injected to humans must be “clean” and pure. However, harvesting a protein from cells and purifying it is a daunting challenge. Current harvesting methods are complicated and expensive.
We made a discovery, which would significantly improve the harvesting and purification process, therefore lowering drug production costs. In this process, biological cells are producing desired proteins from a gene that was planted into the cell’s genome. The key is that after the protein has been produced within cells, we will then induce the cells to send the protein outside – to the liquid medium. This makes the harvesting and purification process much more efficient. The innovation lies in encoding the protein with RNA-based tag. When attached to a gene of interest, the tag will make the producing cell secrete the encoded protein to the medium.
If we program proteins to be secreted to the extracellular medium more efficiently protein harvesting and purification process in Pharma, Biotech and Agricultural industries could be revolutionized. This is extremely important for the Pharma industry, which is struggling on low return on investment, already threatening the sector’s viability. Quicker drug development process, cheaper and higher quality production and improved ROI will create also societal benefit. In the end, new drugs can be discovered and brought to markets quicker.
In the PoC, we will characterize and discover the best tags for protein production and secretion and use it to secret key drugs essential for the Pharma industry, and demonstrate the feasibility of our technology and carry out pre-commercialization actions in order to shorten our innovation’s time to market.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-POC - Proof of Concept Grant

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2018-PoC

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Host institution

WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 150 000,00
Address
HERZL STREET 234
7610001 Rehovot
Israel

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Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 150 000,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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