Date: 01/02/2007
In order to elaborate new potential therapeutic approaches, an additional SME, ProImmune LTd , (UK) has been recruited by the project in 2006 after an international competitive call, to complete the design of de-fined multimers, which allow the de-tection of T cells specific for auto-immune related antigens.
Pentamers can be used to evaluate T cell immunity in disease and in response to therapy, enabling investigators to accelerate their research and the discovery and development of new bio-pharmaceutical drugs in areas of major unmet need, such as cancer, infec-tious diseases, autoimmunity and in transplantation.
The call was published in three national newspapers (in the UK, France and Italy) and in the international edition of the Nature Weekly Journal.
It was also officially announced to the European Commission, on the SMEs go LifeSciences website and on Euro-Thymaide website.
The call remained open for more than eight weeks .
Among candidates, only one firm – ProImmune (Oxford, UK) – offered the competence for the tasks requested. The candidacy of this SME was submitted to the vote of the consortium and accepted unanimously.
Negotiation and discussion on ProImmune participation and integration into Euro-Thymaide's implementation plan took place in the last quarter of 2006 and it was agreed that the firm joins the consortium as off 1 January 2007.
ProImmune has already experience in European Commission FP6 research projects as being one of the SMEs participating in FP6 LifeSciences Project RISET.
The tasks which will be implemented by ProImmune are the following:
1) Design of HLA-DQ8 and HLA-DQ2 allele multimers for analysis of type 1 diabetes-related effector and regulatory T cells specific for insulin/IGF-2, GAD and IA-2 derived antigens.
2) Discovery of new MHC class II-restricted antigens involved in other autoimmune diseases for the purpose of designing MHC-II multimers (especially for HLA-DQ8 and HLA-DQ2) incorporating such antigens and the use of such multimers for detecting T cells specific to such antigens.
Estimated costs and funding for the tasks :
Research costs: 600.000,00 Euros.
Total Commission funding available: 300.000, 00 Euros
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