New Academic Storage Package, project and case study from NCIMB

Aberdeen-based microbiology, analytical services and biological material storage company NCIMB has had a busy few months. The company has launched a new storage package specially tailored to the needs of scientists working on grant-funded projects, kicked-off a new collaborative project with researchers from Edinburgh University and produced a case study to outline the screening work that they undertook for CHAIN Biotechnology Ltd.

Academic storage package

An off-site back up of strains should be a key part of any risk management and disaster recovery plan for organisations using microbes, or other biological material, that cannot be easily replaced. Fire, natural disasters, power failure, equipment malfunction, and human error can all result in devastating setbacks for R&D projects, and the loss or delay of publication and potential future commercialisation opportunities.  Although such incidents are rare, there have been some heart-breaking posts from academic researchers on social media recently, highlighting situations that could have been so much easier to recover from if an off-site back up had been available.

NCIMB’s culture collection curator Dr Samantha law said: “For our academic customers, availability of funding to cover the costs of storage can be an issue, so we have developed our new academic package with that in mind. We are offering discounted rates when researchers commit to several years storage at a time, and obtaining an upfront quote allows the costs to be built into funding applications.”

Dr Samantha Law

Research project kicked-off

A new collaborative project involving NCIMB and the University of Edinburgh kicked-off in February. The ultimate aim of the project, titled “Identifying Novel Chemical Reactivities to Green Industrial Processes using Culture Collections” is to replace current energy- and waste-intensive petrochemical transformations with renewable bio-based alternatives that can be applied to high-value manufacturing. NCIMB’s culture collection – the National Collection of Industrial, Food and Marine Bacteria - is one of the UK’s key biological resources, and includes thousands of microbes that are environmentally important or have industrial applications.

The project will screen 76 strains from the NCIMB culture collection for their ability to perform chemical transformations.  Principal Investigator, UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Biotechnology at Edinburgh University Dr Stephen Wallace said: “Discussions with the chemical industry highlighted two chemical reactions for which there are currently no sustainable or biological alternatives available.  One is an important reaction within pharmaceutical manufacture, the other is applicable to the recycling of persistent waste products.

“Advances in gene sequencing mean that microbes can now be screened more rapidly than before for their potential to carry out specific metabolic functions that meet industrial requirements. However, in order to do that screening it is necessary to first find an organism that carries out that function and then identify the gene sequence that is associated with it. This basic work still needs done for many biochemical pathways, and this is holding back efforts to identify new microbes with industrial potential.  NCIMB’s culture collection is a fantastic biological resource and seemed the obvious starting point for this work.”

A short video produced for the launch of the Scottish Natural Products Network highlights this projects in addition to some other collaborative work that NCIMB has recently been involved with.

Screening Case Study

NCIMB offers whole genome sequencing and bioinformatics services, and they have recently produced a case study highlighting how these services have been combined with antimicrobial susceptibility testing to provide data used in the screening of candidate strains for use in live biotherapeutic products. The case study focuses on work undertaken for CHAIN Biotechnology Ltd - an innovative UK-based company that was founded in 2014. They develop oral live biotherapeutic products (LBP’s) and offer a solution for delivering oral immunotherapies to the large intestine. Their programme focuses on oral vaccines for infectious disease and cancer. As CHAIN’s therapeutic products are based on the use of live bacteria, safety was a crucial consideration in the evaluation of the candidate Clostridium strains. For example, it is important to ensure that the strains used are not themselves pathogenic, or resistant to antibiotics. Chain Biotechnology asked NCIMB to undertake testing on two candidate Clostridium strains, and the full case study can be read at the link below.

For more information, visit: https://www.ncimb.com/