The hubs will each receive up to £12 million from the UKRI Technology Missions Fund and BBSRC core budgets. They will be funded for five years, be based across the country, and involve multiple academic and industrial partners. The hubs will be complemented by a series of mission awards that will fund projects for two years and receive a share of £30 million funding. The awards aim to create an expansion of engineering biology disciplines and communities, building on existing UK strengths and emerging opportunities.
One of these mission awards will be led by Principal Investigator: Christiane Berger-Schaffitzel (School of Biochemistry, Bristol BioDesign Institute). The team will establish robust production of snake venom metalloproteinase (SVMPs) toxins ready for use to develop next generation toxin-specific therapies for tackling snakebite envenoming. SVMPs also exhibit functional specificities desirable for biomedical purposes, as several are used as the basis for anti-platelet drugs or standards for the clinical diagnosis of bleeding disorders. The team will use recombinant, native and engineered toxins to identify new platelet inhibitors that block specific platelet surface receptors that are known drug targets. The project team includes Professor Nick Casewell (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine) as Co-I, and Johara Stringari (University of Bristol) as Researcher Co-I.