WG6 –  Partnership with instrument developers and manufacturing companies

Main objectives

  • Set-up a mechanism for continuous upstream detection of novel physics-based methods and technologies under development that could be applied to solve biological questions. Efficiently disseminate this information to MOBIEU members.
  • Establish an acceptable mechanism and criteria by which the majority of instrument developers would be willing to cooperate with the network and participate in it. Key concerns will include: safeguarding confidential information, finding a mutually acceptable form and forum for dialogue and criticism, establishing willingness to be involved in benchmarking and other experimental evaluation.
  • Identify potential academic or industrial (manufacturing companies) partners and approach them to establish initial contacts with their R&D teams. Involve the companies as sponsors of MOBIEU events.
  • Set-up impartial multi-laboratory comparative studies (in relation with WG4), to evaluate the potential of new methods in relation to existing ones. Set up joint methodological research projects (in relation with WG2), to help consolidate novel methodologies and expand their field of applicability to biological questions.
  • Establish R&D partnerships with the relevant developers and involve them actively in the network (as members or associates).

 

Main achievements

  • Mechanism for Detection of New Technologies: a Technology Alert web survey has been placed on the ARBRE-MOBIEU website and was advertised in the Newsletter (#7 November 2017) – this was used to exchange information with ARBRE-MOBIEU community about something interesting, a new technique that is being developed or a novel application: http://arbre-mobieu.eu/new-technology-alert/. In addition New Technologies and New Applications were often presented in plenary meetings either by company members or from scientists of the ARBRE MOBIEU community implicated in such actions.
  • Industrial partner participation in benchmarking: two benchmarking studies have been performed with the cooperation of industrial partners (see WG4 actions for further details), such studies are to be published in the special issue of the European Biophysics Journal;
  • Industrial partner participation in STSMs: two STSMs implicated industrial partners:

1) Natalia Markova from Malvern (Uppsala, SE) had hosted an STSM by Vaida Paketuryte (Vilnius, LT) on the topic: “ITC precision measurements on PEAQ-ITC”.

2) Jonathan Faherty from Fluidic Analytics (Cambridge, UK) had hosted Christophe Cullin (Bordeaux, FR) on the topic: “Investigating the interaction of Tau protein and lipid membranes using microfluidic diffusional sizing (MDS)”. Further information on both STSMs can be found here: https://arbre-mobieu.eu/awarded-stsms/ (in 1st and 2nd call respectively).

  • Instrument laboratory placements, publications and applications notes:  several instrument placements have been promoted via ARBRE MOBIEU. Some of such have resulted in publications (AM member and industrial partners are underlined):

1) Azouz M, Gonin M, Fiedler S, Faherty J, Decossas M, Cullin C, Villette S, Lafleur M, D Alves I, Lecomte S, Ciaccafava A. (2020) Microfluidic diffusional sizing probes lipid nanodiscs formation. Biochim Biophys Acta Biomembr. 1862, 183215;

2) Macikova L, Sinica V, Kadkova A, Villette S, Ciaccafava A, Faherty J, Lecomte S, Alves ID, Vlachova V. (2019) Putative interaction site for membrane phospholipids controls activation of TRPA1 channel at physiological membrane potentials. FEBS J. 286, 3664.        Additional publications and applications notes are under preparation.

 

  •  Industrial partners participation in training schools, plenary meeting and sponsoring: industrial partners have engaged in training schools, they have all been announced in the Newsletters and can be found here: https://arbre-mobieu.eu/newsletters/, further information about the program and implicated industrial partners can be found in this link: https://arbre-mobieu.eu/events2/. In addition, Malvern organized with ARBRE-MOBIEU the European Microcal meeting (Institut Pasteur, September 2016): https://arbre-mobieu.eu/microcal-meeting-september-2016/. There was a high rate of participation of industrial partners in plenary meeting and sponsoring that can be appreciated from the program of each plenary meeting (https://arbre-mobieu.eu/meetings/ ) and that is summarized in the table below: