Dr. Luis Serrano and Dr. Eva Novoa, researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, have each received a prestigious Proof of Concept (PoC) grant from the European Research Council in the first round of the 2024 competition. Researchers based in Spain have received 10 grants in this year’s round, 8 of them based in Catalonia.
It is the 35th grant from the ERC awarded to researchers based at the CRG, as well as the fourth PoC for Dr. Serrano, making him a recipient of seven ERC grants in total. It is also Dr. Novoa’s first PoC grant, following a Starting Grant received in the year 2021.
The PoC grants – each worth €150,000 – help researchers to bridge the gap between the discoveries stemming from their frontier research and the practical application of the findings, including early phases of their commercialisation.
Designer antibodies
Antibodies are crucial in medicine, and the biotechnology industry responsible for manufacturing them was worth $160 million in 2023. Antibodies are normally made by immunizing animals and then using cells to produce them. However, with growing calls to limit use of animals in research, scientists are increasingly studying how to create antibodies in the lab instead. These designer antibodies also have the added benefit of targeting specific parts of a disease more accurately.
Dr. Luis Serrano’s grant will help leverage advances in AI and precise modelling to design antibodies in the lab. His research group has previously demonstrated, using their proprietary software FoldX and ModelX, that small fragments of antibodies, known as nanobodies, can be designed from scratch and bind strongly to a receptor.
Dr. Serrano will use the ERC PoC Grant to automate his group’s design pipeline and show that it can quickly and cheaply create effective nanobodies. The grant will help pave the way for creating custom, designer antibodies that may eventually benefit patients with different types of diseases.
Liquid biopsies for cancer
Transfer RNAs (tRNAs) are small RNA molecules that play a crucial role in translating genetic information into proteins. In cancer cells, tRNA levels and modifications often become abnormal, leading to increased production of certain cancer-related proteins. Despite this, clinicians do not use this knowledge for cancer diagnosis or prognosis due to the lack of simple and affordable methods to measure tRNA levels and modifications.
Dr. Eva Novoa has developed Nano-tRNAseq, a new method which uses a technology known as nanopore sequencing to accurately and cheaply measure tRNA levels and modifications. The PoC grant will help her research group fully validate the technology by analysing small RNA samples from liquid biopsies, starting with cancer but potentially expanding to other diseases.
Technology transfer
The Proof-of-Concept grant scheme is open only to researchers who currently hold, or have previously been awarded, ERC frontier research grants. These top-up grants help to explore the commercial or societal potential of the findings researchers made through their ERC projects. The objective is to enable ERC-funded ideas to progress on the path from ground-breaking research towards innovation. Both Dr. Serrano and Dr. Novoa plan on bringing any technologies generated from their research to the market, possibly through starting new ventures or companies.
Image: Dr. Luis Serrano and Dr. Eva Novoa pictures at the Centre for Genomic Regulation
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