RESEARCH-LED PROJECTS: 2 case studies
HEALTHCARE 93
RESEARCH-LED PROJECTS: 2 case studies
GRAPHENE OXIDE‘ TEABAGS’ MAKE A MERCURY FREE BREW Paula Marques and colleagues at the UA used graphene oxide nanosheets to create a porous 3D material with a high surface area by a hydrothermal method. The inside of the pores can be functionalized during the preparation, that is, anchored with selected molecules. This allows the surface chemistry of the foams to be modulated and their application directed. After screening their materials for their ability to adsorb various toxic pollutants, the team chose to focus on mercury, one of the top three on the EU’ s priority list of hazardous substances in water. The invention also includes the subsequent encapsulation of the foam in a permeable casing to facilitate its removal from the aqueous medium. The sorption capacity of GO foams is much higher than activated carbon, one of the most common substrates for water decontamination.
The main advantages of these foams lie in their high mercury removal efficiency, the ease of the synthesis process, low cost and the possibility of their application in locations that do not have specific infrastructures. The developing technology is at maturity stage TRL3, and a provisional patent application has recently been deposited( PPP 108.061, 25 November 2014).
The team is looking forward to further exploring this technology in two main phases: i) the development and implementation of this product in Hg polluted water decontamination in the market by scaling-up its production; and ii) the extension of its range of application to efficiently remove combinations of metals and metalloids, such as Hg, Cd, Pb, Ni and As, considered as priority pollutants by the European Water Framework Directive.
Reference: Optimized graphene oxide foam with enhanced performance and high selectivity for mercury removal from water. Bruno Henriques, Gil Gonçalves, Nazanin Emami, Eduarda Pereira, Mercedes Vila, Paula A. A. P. Marques. Journal of Hazardous Materials, Available online 15 September 2015, In Press, Accepted Manuscript; IF = 5.277. http:// dx. doi. org / 10.1016 / j. jhazmat. 2015.09.028
SOFTWARE DEVELOPED AT UA DISSECTS GENOMES: TOWARDS NEW THERANOSTICS APPLIED TO THE EBOLA VIRUS A Bioinformatics and Computational Biology team from the Institute of Electronics and Informatics Engineering( IEETA) and the Department of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics( DETI) of the University of Aveiro has identified specific DNA sequences from the Ebola virus that are absent from the human genome.
These DNA sequences allow the differentiation between Ebola virus species and between the 2014 strain in West Africa and other disease outbreaks, thus enabling these pathogen-specific signatures to be used for diagnosis. Also, these sequences can spark the development of novel therapeutic strategies, as they are located within fundamental proteins in viral replication.
The work of Raquel Silva, Diogo Pratas, Luísa Castro, Armando Pinho and Paulo Ferreira used computational methods for the differential identification of sequences that are derived from a pathogen genome but absent from its host. The software that allowed the discovery( EAGLE) has been made freely available at http:// bioinformatics. ua. pt / software / eagle / and can be applied to other pathogens of biomedical or economical relevance, for which novel diagnosis tools or druggable targets are necessary.
The researchers are looking for partners or collaborators interested in validating the identified DNA sequences in a laboratory setting and participating in future applications.
Reference: Three minimal sequences found in Ebola virus genomes and absent from human DNA. Raquel M. Silva, Diogo Pratas, Luísa Castro, Armando J. Pinho & Paulo J. S. G. Ferreira. Bioinformatics 31( 15): 2421-2425( 2015). DOI: 10.1093 / bioinformatics / btv189 www. ua. pt
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