VIDEO REPORT OF BG NAUKA (BG SCIENCE) (9:45)
Prof. Iliya Iliev on: The Personalized Innovative Medicine (PERIMED) Project
January 10th, 2019 (Thursday)
Translation of the VIDEO REPORT into English provided by: Assoc. Prof. Atanas I. Vladikov, PhD
Notes:
Prof. Iliya Iliev, PhD is the Director of the Centre of Technologies of the University of Plovdiv.
Prof. Iliya Iliev, PhD is the Scientific Head of Center of Competence – PERIMED
Prof. Iliya Iliev, PhD is also the Head of one of the PERIMED Laboratories: Molecular Biomarkers of the Microbiota of the Gastro-Intestinal Tract
Project № BG05M2OP001-1.002-0005-C 01: Center of Competence – Personalized Innovative Medicine (PERIMED) is financed through the Operational Programme: “Science and Education for Smart Growth” 2014-2020 by the European Fund for Regional Development of the European Union.
BG SCIENCE (BG NAUKA) REPORT ON PERIMED:
Prof. Iliya Iliev, Director of the Centre of Technologies of the University of Plovdiv:
My name is Iliya Iliev and I am a Professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at the University of Plovdiv.
I am also incapacitated to be the Scientific Head of the Project on Personalized Medicine to build and set a Center of Competence in the City of Plovdiv.
You know, the Center is being organized into collaboration between the University of Plovdiv, the Medical University of Plovdiv, and the Institute of Mineralogy and Crystallography of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia.
The idea of this Project is to unite the efforts of scientists from the Medical University of Plovdiv with the efforts of scientist from the Faculties of Natural Sciences of the University of Plovdiv to build a modern material and R&D basis to research new biotechnological processes and medical researches in the field of modern Personalized Medicine.
There are planned to be built 12 Working Packages (WPs), which are jointly connected.
Six of these 12 WPs are located at the Medical University of Plovdiv; 5 are located at the University of Plovdiv; and 1 is located at the Institute of Mineralogy and Crystallography in Sofia.
In setting these WPs, we have taken into consideration their joint cooperation, in order to receive end-results, which shall allow us to create new patents, as well as to create new products, which we may place on the market. These products are in the field of biotechnology and in the field of medicine, as a whole.
There shall be built in addition in the University of Plovdiv 5 Labs, which shall be placed in a common infrastructure in the Building, situated at the “Kostaki Peev” Street, which is a property of the University. In these five Labs, at a sequential order, there shall be situated the most recent technologies, which allow to conduct researches not only into Labs, but into semi-industrial conditions, as well, in order to receive the end-product, which we need and to present it to the business for further market operations.
These Labs included molecular biomarkers in microbiota, gastro-intestinal tract, biosensors, immune markers, immune biomarkers for tumor and auto-immune diseases, biocatalysts and naturally bioactive substances, and biopolymers and new materials.
A few words about the uniqueness of these Labs, which are being created as a part of the Center, I will say.
Firstly, I want to underline that we want to realize an idea of a greater scale of the biotechnologies for pharmaceutical and medicine goals. We will stream to turn them into new bio-industries, as a whole. Correspondingly, this idea has to be said that it was under realization for the last 8 years in cooperation with the Medical University of Plovdiv, because the two Universities have built Technological Centres under preliminary conditioned programs.
These Tech Centers work successfully both with businesses, as well as within international programs. And after that – on the second stage, we want to build this higher scale infrastructure, called Center of Competence, which will serve us to develop the idea further and create new products in the pharmacy field; and, at the same time, it will solve the problem for quick implementation in industrial conditions in the country or abroad.
It is planned in this Project, participation of Associated Partners. One of the important Associated Partners is a similar Center of Competence, which is located at the University of Manchester; the other one is located at the Institute of Technologies in Madrid, Spain.
From the standpoint of uniqueness of these Labs, it may be mentioned that for the first time in Bulgaria – in one of the Labs – we will implement technologies, which are connected with the application of the methodology of Directed Science of enzyme molecules, so that we could change the path of enzyme reaction with the goal to change the processes of synthesis of new biologically active substances.
In practice, this methodology in this year, in 2018, received the Nobel Prize Award. Hence, the discoverers of this methodology were awarded with the Nobel Prize Award, while the methodology is used for the past 10 years from many Labs in Europe and we hope for the first time to be implemented in Bulgaria. This will allow us to feel enough confident in implementation of modern biotechnological processes to retrieve biologically active substances.
The scheme of utilization of this technology includes molecular biological methods, enzyme methods, which will allow testing of synthesis of new biologically active substances. Also, there will be biotechnological methods to receive end-products.
All end-products, which we will receive, will be directed namely to personalizing treatment of different diseases of man. A part of these end-products are related to immune-therapy and correspondingly, one of the Labs in the University of Plovdiv: “Immune Biomarkers for Tumor and Auto-immune Diseases” is directly connected with the Laboratory of the Medical University of Plovdiv – “Molecular Biomarkers for Medical Application”.
In the light of this way of thinking, this Lab will take advantage of the achievements in the Molecular Enzymology Lab, in order to further address the opportunity to synthesize end-products.
These end-products will be in the field bio-diagnostics as new means for bio-diagnostics and in the field of creation of new molecules, which eventually will be researched for therapeutic significance.
One of the Labs, which is also unique for the Bulgarian conditions represents a Laboratory on creating an artificial gastro-intestinal tract. It is planned to purchase for this Lab a specialized technology, which will create the opportunity to conduct in-vitro analyses with the possibilities to research the processes with this artificial gastro-intestinal tract.
In reality, this Lab is unique for Bulgaria and for Europe. There 5 such systems in Europe, which function, at present. The main goal of this Lab is to speed in-vitro researches of new pharmaceutical products before their researches on animals, and the consequential legislative procedures to be used on people.
This artificial gastro-intestinal system is, in practice, will be capable of provoking researches – all researches onto processes, which incur in the gastro-intestinal tract with the exception of the immunologic reactions of the human body.
A third Lab, which may be considered as a serious new challenge in the Bulgarian pharmaceutical biotechnological science is the Laboratory, which will handle new biomaterials and new materials with application in the pharmaceutical industry.