Aston University to tackle multidrug resistance targets in collaboration with Calixar

Aston University in Birmingham, UK has entered into a research agreement with French company Calixar, located in Lyon, to study the extraction, stabilisation and crystallisation of full-length human ABC transporters involved in multidrug resistance.

The collaboration has been made possible through the BBSRC Industrial CASE Studentship Competition 2013 framework.

'I am delighted to be able to use Calixar technology to investigate the structural features of this important protein family,' said Dr Alice Rothnie, who has worked on ABC transporters for more than ten years and is the principal investigator on the project.

Co-investigator Professor Roslyn Bill added: 'The partnership between Aston and Calixar will allow us to increase our understanding of the structure and function of these very important proteins building on the unique stabilising properties of Calixar molecules.'

Calixar will provide proprietary processes for the native and functional isolation of targets and their crystallisation. The partnership aims to investigate structure/function relationships and the molecular basis of multidrug resistance proteins to find new leads and to derive conformational antibodies.

The project will also demonstrate the value of innovative processes and technologies set up by the partners for structural based drug discovery applications of challenging human targets of high medical relevance. This work will pave the way to work with other membrane protein targets that are intractable to structural investigation.