The Swedish Agricultural University (SLU), Sweden

 

The Swedish University of Agriculture will develop automated, rapid, highly sensitive and specific techniques for the detection of specific viral contamination in food. Furthermore procedures for standardisation and harmonisation of developed methods will be performed, in order to ensure that the methods can be applied by different laboratories. 

 

Key persons for PathogenCombat

Prof. Sándor Belák, DVM, PhD, DSc. expert in veterinary virology (expert of OIE, FAO, IAEA) (involved in WP4, WP12). He is the author of a new chapter in OIE Manual: “Validation and Quality Control of the Polymerase Chain Reaction Methods used for Diagnosis of Infectious Diseases”. His group comprises four post-doc researchers, three researchers, one PhD student, one MSc student, and six laboratory technicians working in molecular diagnostics, development of new assays and research. The research is focused on molecular characterisation of positive-stranded RNA viruses, i.e., pestiviruses, arteriviruses and coronaviruses, with regards to aspects of viral pathogenesis. Prof. Belák co-ordinated equine arteritis FAIR project PL98-4123 and is presently co-ordinator of QLK2CT-2000-00486: “Development, standardisation and harmonisation of novel multiplex nucleic acid tests for detection of economically important viruses of farm animals”.

 

Dr. Frederik Widén, DVM, PhD. Scientist with practical experience in applied and fundamental veterinary virology (involved in WP4, WP12). His research has focused on molecular characterisation of, and development of new diagnostic assays for Porcine Cytomegalovirus (PCMV). This work has resulted in three publications while a fourth is under preparation. He has developed PCR assays and serological assays based on the expression of recombinant PCMV protein. He has broad experience in the practical application of ELISA and other techniques in serological assays, broad practical experience in the application of the PCR technique in diagnostic assays has gained extensive practical experience from working with different cloning and expression systems.

 

Dr. Peter Thorén, molecular biologist, PhD. Head of the Section for Molecular Diagnostic virology (involved in WP4, WP12). A scientist with practical experience in development of novel diagnostic tools, like real-time PCR assays (TaqMan, molecular beacons), multiplex PCR assays, standardisation, validation of molecular diagnostic assays. Co-author of the OIE Chapter cited above (SB).

 

Dr. Mikhayil Hakhverdyan, PhD, Senior Research Scientists, molecular biologists (WP4, WP12). Dr. Hakhverdyan has practical experience in development of novel diagnostic tools, like real-time PCR assays (TaqMan, molecular beacons), multiplex PCR assay. Experience in conventional PCR - 6 years, real-time PCR - 3 years. Responsible scientists in the EU project QLK2CT-2000-00486: “Development, standardisation and harmonisation of novel multiplex nucleic acid tests for detection of economically important viruses of farm animals”.

To be recruited: Researcher and researcher assistant

 

Prof. Ulf Landegren, MD, PhD, Head of R&D (involved in WP4, WP12)

Professor Ulf Landegren’s research group focuses on the development of advanced molecular tools for analysis of specific DNA, RNA and protein molecules. They have pioneered a number of techniques, including the oligonucleotide ligation assay, padlock probes, proximity ligation, and rolling circle-based methods for signal amplification (see list of 13 patents or patent applications in Appendix 1). Together with collaborators at Stanford University, USA, Prof. Landegren’s group has recently demonstrated that thousands of padlock probes may be combined in single reactions for high-throughput gene detection. This technology has formed the basis of a company co-founded by the Swedish and USA partners, called ParAllele Bioscience. Prof. Landegren is the co-ordinator of the FP6 Integrated Project MolTools (start 2004-01), in order to develop the new generation of microarray-based technologies. The aim is to use microarrays to analyze DNA tags included in specific padlock probes, by hybridizing amplified representations of reacted probes to oligonucleotides in microarray configurations. The MolTools consortium includes 18 leading laboratories and companies from Europe and the USA. Prof. Landegren and assistant professor Mats Nilsson will participate in the development of molecular diagnostic methods for Hepatitis E virus. 

 

Dr. Mats Nilsson, PhD, Associate Professor in Molecular Medicine at the Department of Genetics and Pathology, Uppsala University; co-founder of ParAllele Bioscience and the SME Abacus AB (involved in WP4, WP12). He has ten years of experience of technology development, particularly the padlock probe technology and rolling-circle amplification. He has published 33 articles within the field and filed four patent applications. He has developed multiplex array-based genetic analyses by combining sequence-coded padlock probes with tag-DNA microarrays, applied padlock probes for in situ analysis of single-nucleotide sequence variation, established efficient conditions for ligase-based RNA sequence analysis, developed a rolling-circle based technique that can replace PCR for amplification of padlock probes, and a sensitive analysis format with high quantitative precision through counting of individual rolling-circle products.