UNIVERSITY College Galway has acquired a new £250,000 nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) laboratory which gives a boost to its research and teaching capabilities. The design of a new `magic bullet' for cancer treatment and the development of vaccines against bacterial infections are two research areas in which it can now participate more fully.
The new laboratory was made possible by grants to chemistry lecturer Dr Angela Savage for her research, but it is also available to other staff and to both undergraduate and postgraduate students, who are expected to make heavy use of it. Indeed, a visitor from Moscow, Prof Alexander Shaskov, has just spent a six week stint working on NMR with Savage's group.
Staff and students have the added advantage of being able to access the NMR equipment from their personal computers and workstations over the extensive UCG campus computer network. This means that it is easier for them to incorporate results such as complex graphs and spectra into a final edited thesis or paper. According to R N Butler, professor of chemistry, the college now has magnetic resonance facilities equal to the best in Europe.
The Wellcome Trust in London made a grant of £100,000, which was matched by UCG. The rest of the funding was provided by Irish companies including Roche Ireland, which owns the former Syntex chemical plant in Clarecastle, Co Clare, Loctite in Tallaght, Co Dublin, and the Pfizer Pharmaceutical Corporation in Ringaskiddy, Co Cork.
NMR equipment, which makes use of a superconducting magnet to produce high magnetic fuels, gives detailed information about the structure of molecules. What is unusual about the UCG equipment is that it is set up specifically for the study of carbohydrates, and has a special probe to assist in this.
Although for most people the term carbohydrate conjures up visions of pasta or cakes, carbohydrates are involved in a variety of biomedical processes, and it can be quite difficult to study them.
"Carbohydrates are much more complex than proteins, and bacterial polysaccharides are incredibly complicated," says Savage. "The Wellcome Trust made the grant to me for two areas of research into complex carbohydrates in biomedicine - glycoproteins - and polysaccharides."
A glycoprotein consists of a protein combined with a carbohydrate, while a polysaccharide (cellulose for example) is made up of molecules that are long chains of simple sugars such as glucose or fructose.
Together with researchers in Germany, Portugal and the UK, Angela Savage is working on an EU project which aims to produce an anti cancer magic bullet using genetic engineering techniques. The bullet molecules are the result of a fusion of two naturally occurring molecules. One part is an antibody targeted at the cancer cell, while the second part is a substance called tumour necrosis factor which naturally occurs in the body and kills cancer cells.
"Because the molecule is specifically targeted to the cancer cell there will be none of the side effects associated with less specific treatments such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy," she says.
The antibody part is a glycoprotein and Savage is using the new NMR facilities to analyse its components. Knowing their structure is important as this determines properties such as the lifetime of the serum and its stability.
ONE aim of the overall research is to get the costs down. The drug is not economically viable at present because it is being produced in animals rather than in bacteria.
Complex carbohydrate structures are also implicated in many bacteria caused diseases, including influenza and meningitis. Determining the exact structure and sequence of the repeating sugars making up the polysaccharide involved is a vital step in the work to develop vaccines against these diseases.
As part of the fight against bacterial infections, Dr Anthony Moran of UCG's microbiology department is using the NMR equipment to study carbohydrates implicated in the development of gastroenteritis and gastric ulcers. This work too is part of a major international collaboration.
