Significant developments at the Polo GGB within the ISIDORe research consortium.
ISIDORe – “Integrated Services for Infectious Disease Outbreak Research” is a research project funded by the European Union. It brings together, in a multidisciplinary consortium, 17 European research infrastructures to offer integrated services and ensure a flexible and competent structure to counter the spread of pandemic infectious diseases. Polo GGB, through its research team, is currently engaged in two Joint Research Activities dedicated to the development of new services for the benefit of the ISIDORe infrastructure consortium.
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JRA OPTIGUIDEMALVAC
Thanks to the most innovative Next Generation Sequencing platforms and an advanced computational infrastructure, GGB Hub offers solutions for single-cell transcriptome analysis (scRNA) to research centers, universities, and academic institutions. These skills have allowed the Polo GGB to participate in and win a tender for the study and optimization of protective vaccines for malaria in collaboration with the Biomedical Primate Research Center and CIRMMP (Inter-University Consortium for Magnetic Resonance of Metallo Proteins).
Understanding the mechanisms that drive the immune response is essential for the development and design of vaccines. Specifically, GGB Hub aims to investigate the immune system’s response at the hepatic level in non-human primate models subjected to vaccination. The technological platform of GGB Hub will allow the study of the response to vaccination through high-resolution expression profiles. The data obtained will contribute, along with metabolome analysis and the immunological profile, to defining a pathway for the selection of effective vaccine candidates. This research, in addition to developing an integrated system for defining the mechanism responsible for or the individual cellular contribution to protective hepatic immunity, will specifically support the development of the malaria vaccine through detailed analysis of protective immune responses during the vaccine’s preclinical evaluation.
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JRA behAIve
The Ecology and Genetics research center of GGB Hub located in Terni has a state-of-the-art infrastructure for population studies on genetically modified mosquitoes of the Anopheles and Aedes genus. The center has climatic chambers and large cages capable of reproducing the environmental conditions of tropical regions in terms of temperature, humidity, and light intensity, creating an ecosystem very similar to the natural one, in addition to a combined video tracking system for video capture of mosquitoes. The Joint Research Activities involving the Ecology and Genetics center in collaboration with Radboud University Medical Center and TROPIQ Health Sciences aim to implement a suite of artificial intelligence-guided tools for the behavioral characterization of mosquitoes, the quantification of ticks and mosquitoes’ response to attractive and repellent chemical compounds, and the three-dimensional tracking of flight and behavioral characterization of mosquitoes in large indoor cages. This is to acquire important information on swarm formation and the mating that occurs within them.
A complete novelty is the support of Artificial Intelligence in our research projects and within our technical-scientific know-how!
