Team Nanobodies

Jim Naismith: The biggest challenge of this project was to keep up morale, a lot of this work was done during the first lockdown when no one really knew what was going to happen. The problem felt urgent and the team wanted to move as fast as possible to make an impact but it wasn’t always that easy. It was also difficult to find category 3 labs to do the virus and animal work, so we are grateful to our colleagues at University of Oxford, Public Health England and University of Liverpool for their assistance with this.

Jim Naismith: This project was an amazing example of teamwork, everyone had their own role to play and they were all able to slot into the team and drive this work forward.

Yper Hall: UKHSA were pleased to support RFI with pre-clinical testing of their product. The biggest challenge to us in achieving this, and reporting the data expediently, was the volume of COVID-19 activity happening at the time. It really was reliant upon many of our team going above and beyond.

We did this gladly and take great pride in providing data to support the product’s progression towards the clinic.

Dave Stuart: The virus behind the pandemic depends on numerous interactions within the virus particle and with the human body. Treatments for the disease target these interactions to block the virus. Investigating and understanding these interactions at the molecular level using facilities like Diamond underpins the development of new vaccines and drugs to combat the global pandemic and plays a key part in our preparedness to face future challenges.

Ray Owens: Our work has shown the potential of engineered nanobodies for the diagnosis and treatment of viral diseases, exemplified by COVID-19. There is still a long way to go before these proof of concept studies could be translated into clinical use but the relatively low cost of manufacturing  nanobody based products  makes them attractive alternatives to human antibodies for many applications in medicine.

Jim Naismith: In terms of the Covid-19 nanobodies we have developed we hope to see them enter human trials soon.

More generally, I think the pandemic has highlighted the potential and accelerated the development of nanobodies as a novel therapeutic against respiratory diseases and playing a key role against any future pandemics caused respiratory viruses.

Ray Owens: It seems likely that more nanobody-based agents will enter clinical studies over the next few years complementing human antibodies that are already effective biopharmaceuticals. Novel uses of nanobody technology may come in diagnostics and non-invasive imaging, for which the application of chemistry and materials science will be important.

Ray Owens: As with all sciences, collaboration between scientists brings together complementary skills, different ideas and expertise which are necessary to tackle increasing complex problems that affect human health and the environment. The teamwork involved in tackling the Covid pandemic is a great example of this.

Jim Naismith: I think good research culture is focusing on the quality of the output and valuing everyone’s contributions – not just within the science team but the work done by the operations team was incredibly important. They made sure that deliveries could made and so the work could continue, even in the middle of the lockdowns. People’s contributions are different but they are all important and should be valued.

Jim Naismith: Chemistry will be needed to solve many of the world’s problems. We will new medicines to tackle the world’s health problems which can only be created with greater chemical understanding of disease. If we have any hope of reducing the burden of climate change and for the global south to see greater economic growth without causing environmental degradation, we will need the chemistry of materials will be required to eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels.

Ray Owens: For biologists, chemistry provides a mechanistic basis for understanding how (macro)molecules interact in living systems.

Jim Naismith: Chemistry is the biggest science, it is useful in so many parts of our lives, so be broad minded about what chemistry is and where you could apply chemistry to help solve the world’s problems.

Audrey Le Bas: Chemistry is a wide, exciting subject that covers many areas. I would suggest trying to get experience in a variety of projects, especially in multi-disciplinary teams, to find out what you are the most interested in. Building a good network and working well as a team is essential. Don’t hesitate to be adventurous and to have fun. The more you enjoy your work, the better you will be at it.