Arctic Biodiscovery Centre

Info

Arctic Biodiscovery Centre gathers expertise and infrastructure within bioprospecting and marine biotechnology.

Historie

Polar traditions – A new expedition

Marine biodiscovery and biotechnology has been a core research area at the UiT for years. Public and private funding has enabled the establishment of a modern research infrastructure and has placed Tromsø as the marine biotech capital in Norway. Furthermore, a long-term strategic investment and focus has led to the development of state of the art expertise within several biotechnological disciplines, represented both in the academia and by industrial research.

Arctic Biodiscovery Centre will continue the drug discovery research and development, which was successfully initiated by the MabCent-SFI project. Existing and new candidates and leads from marine microorganisms and invertebrates will be followed up and developed further in good collaboration with national and international partners.

In addition to the drug focused biodiscovery, areas of interest also include biocatalysts/enzymology for use in various biotechnological, genetics and diagnostic applications. Furthermore, arctic substances may find their use also in cosmetics, as well as in food and other ingredients.



A complete biodiscovery pipeline

The Arctic Biodiscovery Centre is build on the knowledge and infrastructure established through the MabCent-SFI project and comprises a complete pipeline from discovery and storage of biomolecules to their use in various biotechnological applications. Research vessels owned and operated by UiT and Institute of Marine Research (IMR) will continue to acquire biological samples from the marine arctic environment to be stored and processed by Marbank, screened by Marbio and structure determined by Smalstruct and Norstructs, as the key biodiscovery units.

Downstream research platforms include state of the art infrastructure to carry out derivatization, low molecular synthesis and protein expressions. In addition, analytical platforms for proteomics, micro-array, bio-imaging and bioinformatics are included. Facilities for animal research for documentation of health effects are part of the centre, and human clinical trials can be supervised through collaboration with the University Hospital of Northern Norway; UNN

Research infrastructure for upscaling, bioprocessing and generic laboratories are present at Nofima, Norut and Sintef research platforms.

Arctic Biodiscovery Centre will continue the ongoing research activities as well as expand the collaboration with industrial and academic partners. The centre assembles expertise, infrastructure and know-how under one organisational umbrella to increase accessibility and to contribute to commercialisation of natural products from Arctic waters.

As industrial aspects are prioritized within the Arctic Biodiscovery Centre, having a close partnership with the biotechnological cluster organization Biotech North is a key strategic alliance.