ProNova VINN Excellence Centre for Protein Technology Stage II 2009-2012

Important results from the project

ProNova VINN Excellence Centre for Protein Technology Stage II 2009-2012The vision of the ProNova Centre is to become one of the leading academic Centres in the world for multi-disciplinary research in protein technology, including relevant technology-driven research in protein engineering, bioimaging, microfluidics and bioinformatics. The research activities include technology development as well as the use of the Centre platforms to address different biological questions and needs expressed by the partner companies.

Expected long term effects

The expected results of the Centre can be summarized as follows: - To gather and organize a resource of competence to perform needs-motivated research for the generation of new products, processes and services for the promotion of a sustained Swedish economy growth. - To promote an intense, effective and productive interaction climate between the involved parties leading to new innovative solutions. - To work with a focus on building long-term value for involved parties and Sweden involving the creation and sustaining of international excellence.

Approach and implementation

A strategy of the ProNova Centre is to allow several complementary disciplines to be coordinated and integrated in collaborations between the research groups at KTH and company partners with interest in protein technology. Considerable synergy can be obtained by locating complementary platforms of technology and informatics, such as bioautomation, microfluidics, detection technologies and bioinformatics, in organizational and geographical conjunction with data generation platforms, such as proteomics and genomics. A multi-disciplinary and innovative environment can thus be created and larger and more complex questions be tackled. The ProNova Centre is working in close collaboration with the Swedish Human Protein Atlas (HPA) program (www.proteinatlas.org). In a unique collaboration, the wealth of antibody reagents produced in the HPA project pipeline is made available for ProNova projects. This provides for an extraordinary opportunity for the Centre partners to access an extensive content-resource allowing for pioneering exploration of the field of global protein analysis, including for example use of different platforms for multiplexed disease-specific biomarker discovery and serum analysis.