Video transcript: University of Leeds KTP with Spur Therapeutics
Transcript for the video embedded in the Spur Therapeutics Knowledge Transfer Partnership case study.
[The screen shows a red and black background with the title ‘University of Leeds KTP Case Studies: Freeline Therapeutics’.]
[Music]
[Dr. Tomasz Kaminski, KTP Associate of Freeline Therapeutics, appears on the screen and seated in front of the camera.]
[Dr. Tomasz Kaminski says:] “You can think of viruses as being made from a flat sheet of hexagons. If you now replace one of these hexagons with a pentagon you then bend the sheet ever so slightly. The current virus we work with is called AAV. It's one of the smallest known viruses to humanity. It uses only pentagons. So there's limits on how big of a helpful DNA molecule we can put inside it. Now, my name is Tomasz Kaminski I am the KTP associate. The basic goal of the project is therefore to try to engineer a bigger virus which can transport more DNA. To achieve this requires modifying mutating the component proteins which make up this viral shell.”
[Henning Stennicke, Chief Scientific Officer of Freeline Therapeutics, appears on the screen, seated in front of the camera.]
[Henning Stennicke says:] “That came into three different phases. One was design, where we leverage the technology bases delivered by the KTP for the in silico design. The next phase is really trying to take it back here to Freeline and produce the new capsids that we've designed and see: could we get the structures that we were predicting? My name is Henning Stennicke I'm the CSO at Freeline which means I oversee all the companies research and preclinical activities. Freeline as a company is a gene therapy company which means we try to develop genetic medicines which are perhaps not full cures but definitely long term sustainable treatments.”
[Dr. James Ross, EPSRC Scientific Biology Researcher from the University of Leeds, appears on the screen, seated in front of the camera.]
[Dr. James Ross says:] “So these KTPs are a way of fast tracking that academic research into an industrial context. And what that means is that the research that we're doing academically can be applied in the real world much more quickly. My name is Dr. James Ross and I'm a scientific advisor from the academic side for the KTP. This KTP has been an interesting and unique challenge because this one is a blue sky research KTP. The technology that we're transferring is a method by which you can do protein engineering.”
[Henning Stennicke, Chief Scientific Officer of Freeline Therapeutics, appears on the screen, seated in front of the camera.]
[Henning Stennicke says:] “We would probably not as a company be able to go into big design projects like this without a strong academic partner and address these specific questions. And I think for us the KTP collaboration has been hugely valuable and given us access to both infrastructure at Leeds University but also the expertise.”
[Dr. Tomasz Kaminski, KTP Associate of Freeline Therapeutics, appears on the screen, seated in front of the camera.]
[Dr. Tomasz Kaminski says:] “So you've got knowledge transfer from the company to Leeds but also most importantly all the computational knowledge, the computational design being transferred from Leeds to the company. And that is probably the biggest benefit here. The combination of two knowledge bases together to achieve something new.”
[The video ends with a screen displaying the text “leeds.ac.uk/ktp”.]