Organisms of the gut-invasive genus Helicobacter, such as H. felis shown, have long been a hallmark of BABS research and are the present focus of Professor Hazel Mitchell.
Development of Smart Surfaces Capable of Supporting Stem Cell Enrichment and Expansion
(In collaboration with GSBME)
Many types of natural and artificial solid phase materials (polymers) are available commercially for immobilisation of proteins and cell growth, but these are not very efficient and advances over the years have been poor.
We propose to use the Clostridium cellulosome complex proteins and domains as a model to immobilise and present these growth factors and signalling peptides to mimic the presentation of membrane-bound growth factors by stromal cells to immobilise, enrich and expand rare stem cells, either in their differentiated or undifferentiated state. Cellulosome chimeric proteins have already been used for the immobilisation and enrichment of rare cells expressing specific antigens in hollow cellulose fibres in our project. Cell biology is therefore an important aspect of this project.
BABS personnel that are responsible for this project