Project: Development of benchtop equipment for automated characterization of viruses and other biological nanoparticles
The product to be developed is a portable benchtop electron microscope (EM) capable of rapid automatic detection, quantification and characterization of nano-sized biological particles and identification of viruses. The primary users are scientists at Universities and biotech companies, and hospital and veterinary diagnostic laboratories worldwide._x000D__x000D_Viral pandemics as well as new emerging and re-emerging viruses are the reality of today. The tools that are currently available to identify viral diseases are not complete and suffer from several problems, including the fact that new or mutated viruses may escape detection. Direct visualization of viruses in electron microscopes offers opportunities to a rapid and “catch-all” method for virus identification based on structural properties which are less prone to mutations._x000D__x000D_Furthermore, within only two decades drugs with biological origin have surpassed the drugs with pharmaceutical origin in terms of number of new drug approvals. The use of bio nanotechnology is posed to further accelerate this technology shift. A critical component in bio nanotechnology development is the optimization of nano-sized particles used to transport and distribute the active substance in humans. Currently available technologies to analyze these particles do either not provide sufficient particle data or are too costly for the majority of end-users._x000D__x000D_The proposed project will enable a new portable technology for cost efficient characterization of biological nanoparticles and an objective, rapid and on-site identification of viruses. This will be achieved by combing state-of-the-art techniques within miniaturized electron microscopy (DELONG) with image analysis (Vironova, CBA) and GPGPU (General Purpose Computing on Graphics Processing Units) to accelerate parts of the processing system (Vironova)._x000D__x000D_The project consortium is a Pship between two European SMEs (Vironova in Sweden and DELONG in Czech Republic), the Centre for Image analysis, which is a collaboration between Uppsala University and the Swedish University of agricultural sciences, focusing on research and graduate education in computerized image analysis and scientific visualization. The project also intends to involve two national centers for infectious disease control in Sweden (SMI) and the USA (CDC) who are government expert authorities which monitor the epidemiology of infectious disease and promote control and prevention of these diseases. Both of these organisations (Dr. Charles Humphrey, CDC, Dr. Kjell-Olof Hedlund, SMI) have expressed a strong interest in the proposed technology product and have agreed to test the resulting prototype. Both have laboratories for virus culture under BSL2, BSL3 and BSL4 conditions and equipment and staff for sample preparation and imaging, including ultracentrifuge, TEM and CCD camera. They house collections of almost all known human pathogenic BSL3 and BSL4 viruses, including Filovirus (Ebola, Marburg), Arenavirus, Nipah virus, SARS coronavirus, Avian Influenza A virus, Dengue virus, Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic Fever virus, Hantavirus, West Nile virus and more. _x000D_
| Acronym | MiniTEM (Reference Number: 6143) |
| Duration | 01/05/2011 - 30/09/2014 |
| Project Topic | This project will develop portable technology for rapid automatic characterization and identification of viruses and nano-sized biological particles, based on the participants’ unique expertise in miniaturized electron microscopy and image analysis and software development. |
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Project Results (after finalisation) |
Compact smaller TEM, with the electron beam energy reduced but high enough to image negatively stained virus specimens, easily transportable, with outer communication interface enabling external control by image analysis software. The TEM can be also utilized in another research and diagnostics fields. It is easy to use and install with-out any special accompanying installation costs. |
| Network | Eurostars |
| Call | Eurostars Cut-Off 5 |
Project partner
| Number | Name | Role | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Centre for Image Analysis, Uppsala University and Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences | Partner | Sweden |
| 3 | DELONG INSTRUMENTS a.s | Partner | Czech Republic |
| 3 | Vironova AB | Coordinator | Sweden |