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My TEDx Experience… Last February I was contacted by the TED-X committee of my city, Verona, and asked to share the story of my research activities in the framework of the TED-X event to beheld the 24th of April 2016.

I was a bit nervous and had no idea how to explain what I actually do in the lab but I managed to tell the story of how I fell in love with biotechnol-ogy, my research area and the emotional part of my journey.

It was quite hard (I prepared five different versions of my speech) but in the end I found a way to share my story.

The event itself was really inspiring because it put together some very different stories, and each speaker brought with them a real sense of en-thusiasm. During the day as fellow speakers we shared our emotions and fears of the stage along with the contact and feedback from the audience (from a Rugby player being incited by his coach before taking the stage to a famous physician professor repeating and studying his speech all daylong).

I have had a lot of positive feedback following my speech and it has al-lowed me to spread the philosophy of molecular farming to a larger audi-ence, so I definitively suggest to other researchers to try… and enjoy it!

Linda Avesani

TEDx links…

You can watch Linda’s TEDx talk

here (to add subtitles in a different

language use the ‘settings’ function

which can be found at the bottom

right-hand corner of the video).

I have also discovered other TEDx/

on-line videos by ISPMF members

that you may also find interesting.

One by Julian Ma given last No-vember on ‘How to improve glob-al health with a lethal killer’ And another (not a TEDx but a great video) from our new presi-dent George Lomonossoff on his transient expression system

Penny Hundleby

ISPMF Newsletter for the International Society of Plant Molecular Farming ISSUE 07 October 2016

In this issue:

My TEDx Experience P.1 New Facilities P.2

Publications P.4 Up coming meetings P.8

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Queensland - Australia.

A new facility based at the University of Queensland for the production of therapeutic peptides in

plants has recently been set up in the laboratory of Professor David Craik at the Institute for Molecu-

lar Bioscience (IMB). The new facility is founded from an initial award of a $1 million grant from the

Clive and Vera Ramaciotti Foundation and additional funds from UQ. The facility will focus on the

production of engineered cyclotides and other cyclic plant peptides. Cyclotides are naturally-

occurring plants-defence peptides that are ultra-stable and Craik’s group has been using them as

scaffolds in drug design for the last 10 years. The new facility will explore the production of therapeu-

tic peptides in a range of plants. The facility will be officially opened on October 18th, 2016. You can

find out more about this exciting you facility at http://www.imb.uq.edu.au/david-craik, or by contact-

ing d.craik@imb.uq.edu.au .

New Research Facilities:

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Artists impression of the Leaf Systems building

due to open Q2 2017

Leaf Systems® International Limited is a new contract development business specialising in the ex-pression and production of proteins, metabolites and complex natural products for research and bio-medical applications using a proprietary, transient expression technology. It will use the proprie-tary Hypertrans® expression technologies developed by Prof. George Lomonossoff at the John Innes Centre, UK for the simultaneous production of multiple gene products in a controlled and coordi-nated manner within the tissues of plants. Potential applications of the technology include:

Production of complex proteins, such as antibodies or enzymes for research applications.

Production of antigens including virus-like particles for vaccine development or nano-technology.

Rapid prototyping and surge production in response to external circumstances.

Metabolic pathway engineering to generate complex biochemicals that are difficult or im-possible to synthesise chemically or are only found in rare species or trace amounts in na-ture.

Leaf Systems will employ state of the art containment facilities, currently under construction on the Norwich research park (NRP), England and due to become operational in 2017, to produce both pro-teins and metabolites. Leaf Systems will work with companies as a contract development organisa-tion to develop and scale the production of their products or intermediates and will also work alongside academic scientists to translate their science into scalable processes or to develop new en-abling technologies, including as a collaborator on grants. Leaf Systems has SME status and is avail-able to participate in translational research and development consortia, including EU framework programs.

®

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Publications A biodistribution study of two differently shaped plant virus nanoparticles reveals new peculiar traits

Lico C., Giardullo P., Mancuso M., Benvenuto E., Santi L., Baschieri S.

Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces

doi: 10.1016/j.colsurfb.2016.09.019.

Volume 148, 1 December 2016, Pages 431–439

This interdisciplinary study results from the collaboration between the laboratories of Bio-technology and Biomedical Technologies at ENEA (Rome), and the Department of Agricul-tural and Forestry Science at the University of Tuscia (Viterbo).

It is focused on the in vivo behaviour, in a mu-rine model, of two plant viruses, TBSV and PVX, and demonstrates their different persistence in the blood stream, their different localization within organs and their different ability to cells association. This study is a ground reference for future testing of functionalized plant virus na-noparticles designed for biomedical applica-tions through the display, on their external surface, of peptides or active moieties.

we would appreciate if you can include a notification of the recently published manuscript of our workgroup (the lab of Inge Broer; Department of Agrobi-otechnology; University of Rostock): Nausch H, Hausmann T, Ponndorf D, Hühns M, Hoedtke S, Wolf P, Zeyner A, Broer I (2016) Tobacco as platform for a commercial production of cyanophy-cin. New Biotechnology 33: 842-851 Thanks a lot and best regards Henrik

Technology Solutions for Non-Profits

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Many thanks to those of you who contacted us with details of your publications for 2016. It looks to have been a productive year for ISPMF members (pages 4-7) and I am sure there are many more out there not yet on our list! Please do share with us your successes.

As you were sending in your publications for this newsletter, I asked a couple of you to ‘tell us a bit more about your publication…’

Lico C., Giardullo P., Mancuso M., Benvenuto E., Santi L., Baschieri S (2016). A biodistribution study of two differently shaped plant virus nanoparticles reveals new peculiar traits. Colloids and Surfac-es B: Biointerfaces 148: 431–439.

Chiara Lico wrote: ‘This was a collaboration between the laboratories of Biotechnology and Biomedical Technologies at ENEA (Rome), and the Department of Agricultural and Forestry Science at the Universi-ty of Tuscia (Viterbo). Focused on the in vivo behaviour, in a murine model, of two plant viruses, TBSV and PVX, and demonstrates their different persistence in the blood stream, their different localization within organs and their different ability to cells association. This study is a ground reference for future testing of functionalized plant virus nanoparticles designed for biomedical applications through the dis-play, on their external surface, of peptides or active moieties.

Atkinson R., Burt F., Rybicki E, Meyers AE., (2016). Plant-produced Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus nucleoprotein for use in indirect ELISA. J Virol Methods. 236:170-7

Ed Rybicki wrote: ‘Well this was a great collaboration between us at the University of Cape Town - a plant biotech lab - and an animal/human virology lab dealing with emerging pathogens, led by Felicity Burt at the University of the Free State’. We could do the plant expression and purification of the diag-nostic protein; they did the "gold standard" ELISA test to determine that our antigen was in fact better than their conventionally-produced one. Made for a nice paper in a very topical field!

And another from Ed et al... Lamprecht RL, Kennedy P, Huddy SM, Bethke S, Hendrikse M, Hitzeroth II, Rybicki EP (2016) Production of Human papillomavirus pseudovirions in plants and their use in pseudovirion-based neu-tralisation assays in mammalian cells. Sci Rep. 6:20431

Publications for 2016

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Other publications from the ISPMF community (2016)

A subset of papers sent in from VTT Finland (with thanks to Kirsi-Marja) and representing a range of publications from international collaborations. Reuter L, Ritala A, Linder M, Joensuu JJ (2016): Novel hydrophobin fusion tags for plant-produced bi-functional fusion proteins. Plos ONE (in press)

Saberianfar R, Sattarzadeh A, Joensuu JJ, Kohalmi SE, Menassa R (2016): Protein bodies in leaves exchange contents through the endoplasmic reticulum. Frontiers Plant Sci. 7: 693

Soikkeli M, Kurppa K, Kainlauri M, Arpiainen S, Paananen A, Gunnarsson D, Joensuu JJ, Laak-sonen P, Prunnila M, Linder MB, Ahopelto J. (2016): Graphene biosensor programming with genet-ically engineerd fusion protein monolayers. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 8: 8257-8264.

Topp E, Irwin R, McAllister T, Lessard M, Joensuu JJ, Kolotilin I, Conrad U, Stöger E, Mor T, Warzecha H, Hall JC, McLean MD, Cox E, Devriendt B, Potter A, Depicker A, Virdi V, Holbrook L, Doshi K, Dussault M, Friendship R, Yarosh O, Yoo HS, MacDonald J, Menassa R. (2016): The case for plant-made veterinary immunotherapeutics. Biotechnol. Adv. 34: 597-604.

Reuter L, Conley AJ, Joensuu JJ. (2016): Continuous flow separation of hydrophobin fusion proteins from plant cell culture extract. In: Menassa R, MacDonald J, Kolotilin I (Eds) Recombinant proteins from plants: methods and protocols, 2nd edition, Springer Science, New York. USA, pp. 189-197

Häkkinen, S.T., Moyano, E., Cusidó, R.M. and Oksman-Caldentey, K.-M. (2016): Exploring the metabolic stability of engineered hairy roots after 16 years maintenance. Frontiers Plant Sci. 7: 1486

Puupponen-Pimiä, R., Nohynek, L., Juvonen, R., Kössö, T., Truchado, P., Westerlund-Wikström, B., Leppänen, T., Moilanen, E. and Oksman-Caldentey, K.-M. (2016): Fermentation and dry fractionation increase bioactivity of cloudberry (Rubus chamaemorus). Food Chem. 197: 950-958.

Pirttimaa, M., Nasereddin, A., Kopelyanskiy, D., Kaiser, M., Yli-Kauhaluoma, J., Oksman-Caldentey, K.-M., Brun, R., Jaffe, C.L., Moreira, V.M. and Alakurtti, S. (2016): Abietane-type diterpenoid amides with highly potent and selective activity against Leismania donovani and Trypano-soma cruzi. J. Nat. Prod. 79: 362-368.

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Other publications from the ISPMF community (2016)

From the lab of George Lomonosoff, John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK:

Lomonossoff G. P. and D’Aoust, M.A. (2016). Plant-produced biopharmaceuticals: A case of tech-nical developments driving clinical deployment. Science 353, 1237-1240. Marsian, J., Lomonossoff, G. P. (2016) Molecular pharming-VLPs made in plants. Current Opinion in Biotechnology 37, 201-206. Saxena P., Lomonossoff G. P. (2016) Production of virus-like particles in plants "Viral Nanotechnol-ogy", CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, Boca Raton FL, USA, 251-262. Huynh N. T., Hesketh E. L., Saxena P., Meshcheriakova Y., Ku Y. C., Hoang L. T., Johnson J. E., Ranson N. A., Lomonossoff G. P., Reddy V. S. (2016) Crystal Structure and Proteomics Analysis of Empty Virus-like Particles of Cowpea Mosaic Virus. Structure 24, 567-575.

Mardanova E. S., Kotlyarov R. Y., Kuprianov V. V., Stepanova L. A., Tsybalova L. M., Lomonos-soff G. P., Ravin N. V.(2016) High immunogenicity of plant-produced influenza based on the M2e peptide fused to flagellin. Bioengineered 7, 28-32.

Lebedev N., Griva I., Dressick W. J., Phelps J., Johnson J. E., Meshcheriakova Y., Lomonossoff G. P., Soto C. M. (2016) A virus-based nanoplasmonic structure as a surface-enhanced Raman biosen-sor. Biosensors and Bioelectronics 77, 306-314.

Henrik Nausch from the lab of Inge Broer, University of Rostock:

Nausch H, Hausmann T, Ponndorf D, Hühns M, Hoedtke S, Wolf P, Zeyner A, Broer I (2016). Tobacco as platform for a commercial production of cyanophycin. New Biotechnology 33: 842-851

Zahin M, Joh J, Khanal S, Husk A, Mason H, Warzecha H, Ghim SJ, Miller DM, Matoba N, Jen-son AB (2016). Scalable Production of HPV16 L1 Protein and VLPs from Tobacco Leaves. PLoS One. 11(8):e0160995

Continued...

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Visit the ISPMF website to access links to the above 2016 papers

(2014 and 2015 publications are also listed)

To have your publications added please contact us.

Other publications from the ISPMF

community.

Vamvaka E, Twyman RM, Murad AM, Melnik S, Teh AY, Arcalis E, Altmann F, Stoger E, Rech E, Ma JK, Christou P, Capell T. (2016). Rice endosperm produces an underglycosylated and potent form of the HIV-neutralizing monoclonal antibody 2G12. Plant Biotechnol J. 14(1):97-108. Madeira LM, Szeto TH, Ma JK, Drake PM. (2016) Rhizosecretion improves the production of Cya-novirin-N in Nicotiana tabacum through simplified downstream processing. Biotechnol J. 11(7):910-9

Papers from Paloma Juraz, Vikram Virdi and Ann Depicker Ghent University

Dicker M.,Tschofen M., Maresch D., König J., Juarez P., Orzaez D., Altmann F., Steinkellner H. and Strasser R. (2016). Transient glyco-engineering to produce recombinant IgA1 with defined N- and O-glycans in plants. Front Plant Sci. 7, 18.

Topp E., Irwin R., McAllister T., Lessard M., Joensuu J.J., Kolotilin I., Conrad U., Stöger E., Mor T., Warzecha H., Hall J.C., McLean M.D., Cox E., Devriendt B., Potter A., Depicker A., Virdi V., Holbrook L., Doshi K., Dussault M., Friendship R., Yarosh O., Yoo H.S., MacDonald J. and Menassa R. (2016). The case for plant-made veterinary immunotherapeutics. Adv. 34, 597-604.

Juarez P., Virdi V., Depicker A. and Orzaez D. (2016). Biomanufacturing of protective antibodies and other therapeutics in edible plant tissues for oral applications. Plant Biotechnol. J. 14, 1791-1799.

Virdi V.*, Juarez P., Boudolf V. and Depicker A. (2016). Recombinant IgA production for mucosal passive immunization, advancing beyond the hurdles. Mol. Life Sci. 73, 535-545.

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Upcoming Events Contact Us:

Please send details of any

upcoming conferences,

workshops, or meetings

that may be of interest to

the ISPMF community.

Interest in plant-made pharmaceuticals is on the rise again following positive regulatory approvals, gov-ernment support and improvements in production methods. Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s Inaugu-ral Plant-Based Expression and Synthetic Biology conference showcases the latest developments in plant-based product development, with in-depth case studies on protein engineering, expression, process de-velopment, scale-up, commercialization and synthetic biology for host improvement. View Agenda and Speaker Line-up, at: http://www.chi-peptalk.com/plant-based-expression-conference . ISPMF members use keycode ISPMF20 while registering to receive a 20%* discount. *Note: This offer applies to new regis-trations only, and cannot be used in conjunction with any other discounts.

2017 Gordon Research Conference on: Physical Virology Structure-Function Relations in Viruses and

Virus-Like Materials January 29 - February 3, 2017, Renaissance Tuscany Il Ciocco Lucca (Barga), Italy

ISPMF registration discount also applies.

Taming Plant Viruses - Fundamental Biology to Bionano-

technology, 8—10 November 2016, Atholl Palace Hotel,

Pitlochry, UK

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hear from you!

Please email via the link below with ‘ISPMF Newsletter’ as your header