Matsumura (Virology) and co-applicant D’Adamo (Bio Process Engineering) receive funding for their grant proposal “Plug & Play”: Combining plant virus-derived VLPs and microalgae production platform towards a toolkit for biotechnological applications. The NWO Open Technology Programme provides funding for application-oriented technical-scientific research that is free and unrestricted and is not hindered by disciplinary boundaries.
“Plug & Play”: Combining plant virus-derived VLPs and microalgae production platform towards a toolkit for biotechnological applications.
Promoting human quality of life not only demands rapid pharmaceutical measures for human diseases, but also requires developing novel therapeutics and alternative production and delivery approaches. Virus-like particles (VLPs) are naturally occurring nanoparticles that can be tailored to act as nanocarriers of a diverse range of therapeutic cargoes in medicine. In this project, we will create a universal plug-and-play toolkit comprising several plant virus-derived VLPs for use in biotechnological applications. To explore alternatives for feasible production of the newly developed toolkit, as well to assure its scalability, this project will also establish a microalgae-based bioreactor production system for it.