PROJECT MANAGEMENT TEAM

Beatrice Vallone – Coordinator (Sapienza Università di Roma)

Alberto Boffi – Training Officer (MoLiRom)

Riccardo Carelli – Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation (Sapienza Consorzio Innovazione)

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS

Prof Beatrice Vallone
Prof Beatrice ValloneSapienza Università di Roma
Chemistry and Biochemistry
Management, Training and Research
Prof Richard Neutze
Prof Richard NeutzeGöteborgs Universitet
Department of Chemistry & Molecular Biology
Training and Research
Prof Henry Chapman
Prof Henry ChapmanProfessor Universität Hamburg
Institut für Experimentalphysik
Training and Research
Prof Jorgen Larsson
Prof Jorgen LarssonLunds Universitet
Medical Laser Centre Department of Physics Lund University
Training and Research
Prof Michael Wulff
Prof Michael WulffESRF
European Synchrotron Radiation Facility
Head of beamline
Training and Research
 Dr. Marco Cammarata
Dr. Marco CammarataCNRS researcher
Institut de Physique de Rennes
Training and Research
Dr Annette Eckhardt
Dr Annette EckhardtXtal Concepts
Managing Director
Training and Technology development
Dr. Margareta Ek
Dr. Margareta EkAstraZeneca R&D
Associate Principle Scientist
Training and Technology development
Dr. Alessandra Bonamore
Dr. Alessandra BonamoreMolirom srl
Associate research fellow
Training and Technology development
Prof. Gebhard F.X. Schertler
Prof. Gebhard F.X. SchertlerPaul Scherrer Institute
Structural biology methods
Training and Research

Academic Supervisors

Prof. Christian Betzel
Prof. Christian BetzelUniversität Hamburg
Xtal Concepts Academic Supervisor
Dr. Gisela Brändén
Dr. Gisela BrändénUniversity of Gothenburg
AstraZeneca R&D Academic Supervisor
Prof. Alberto Boffi
Prof. Alberto BoffiSapienza
Università di Roma
MoLiRom Academic Supervisor
Sapienza, Università, Roma, Sapienza Università di Roma, UniRoma1, X-Probe
X-Probe, Team, University, Universitas Gotheburgensis, Gotheburg
X-Probe, Team, University, Hamburg, Universität Hamburg
X-Probe, Team, University, Lund, Lund University
X-Probe, Team, European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Synchrotron, Installation européenne de rayonnement synchrotron, Grenoble, France
CNRS, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Institut de Physique de Rennes, Rennes, France
xtal, xtal Concepts GmbH is a spin-off company of the universities of Hamburg and Lübeck, Germany
MoLiRom, X-Probe, Team, Rome, Italy
X-Probe, Team, AstraZeneca, Mölndal, Sweden
PSI, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland

ESR (Early Stage Researchers)

Cécile Exertier
Cécile ExertierProf Beatrice Vallone Group
Rome, Italy
Project: Time-resolved diffraction & WAXS studies of heme proteins.

See Project
Robert Bosman
Robert BosmanProf. Richard Neutze Group
Gothenburg, Sweden
Project: Time resolved dynamics studies of membrane proteins.

See Project
Daniela Baitan
Daniela BaitanDr Annette Eckhardt Group
Hamburg, Germany
Project: Preparing nano and micro crystals applying the X-tal Controller technology.

See Project
Victoria Kabanova
Victoria KabanovaProf. Michael Wulff Group
Grenoble, France
Project: Time-resolved crystallography and WAXS studies at synchrotron sources.

See Project
Xiaocui Wang
Xiaocui WangProf. Jörgen Larsson Group
Lund, Sweden
Project: Ultrafast X-ray diffraction & WAXS infrastructure.

See Project
Aleksandra Tolstikova
Aleksandra TolstikovaProf. Henry Chapman Group
Hamburg, Germany
Project: Serial crystallography at XFELs & synchrotrons.

See Project
Matilde Trabuco
Matilde TrabucoDr Alessandra Bonamore Group
Rome, Italy
Project: Dynamical studies of protein carriers.

See Project
Lodovico Balducci
Lodovico BalducciDr. Marco Cammarata Group
Rennes, France
Project: Ultrafast Dynamics probed by X-ray Absorption and Scattering and Diffraction.

See Project
Jenny Hering
Jenny HeringDr Margareta Ek Group
Mölndal, Sweden
Project: Structural, dynamical and inhibitor studies of membrane proteins.

See Project
Niranjan Varma
Niranjan VarmaProf. Gebhard Schertler Group
Villigen, Switzerland
Project: Time resolved studies of visual rhodopsin.

See Project

Capacity of the Participating Organisations

General Description

The Vallone group focuses on the structural dynamics of heme proteins and work primarily with the time resolved X-ray diffraction and wide-angle x-ray scattering, spectroscopy and kinetics. They aim to determine the functional relevance of dynamics events and identify reaction intermediates. The group has contributed to crystallography and structure-function relationship of heme proteins.

Role and Commitment of key persons (including supervisors)

Beatrice Vallone, PhD, full professor. Structural biology and structural dynamics methods.
Carmelinda Savino, PhD. Research associate, crystallisation and data-analysis.
Linda Celeste Montemiglio, PostDoc, Protein crystallography and kinetics measurements, SAXS.
Giacomo Parisi, PhD Student. P450 cytochromes and WAXS.
Antonella Scaglione, PhD Student, Protein crystallography and SAXS.

Key Research Facilities and Infrastructure and Equipment

B. Vallone is coordinator of the CNR facility “Biocrystal Facility” (www.biocrystalfacility.it), the group is also equipped with continuous flow, rapid mixing, T-jump equipment and participates to projects with access to the time resolved beam line ID09B at ESRF.

General Description

The Neutze group focuses upon the structural biology of membrane proteins, working primarily with membrane protein crystallisation and X-ray diffraction. They are leading in the development and application of time-resolved structural methods to membrane proteins and are known for work using intermediate trapping, time-resolved diffraction and time-resolved WAXS.

Role and Commitment of key persons (including supervisors)

Richard Neutze PhD, professor. Structural biology and structural dynamics methods. Coordinator & PhD supervisor ESR1.
Kristina Hedfalk, PhD, Docent.
Gergely Katona, PhD, Associate Professor. Membrane protein production, purification, crystallisation and data-analysis
Sebastian Westenhoff, PhD Assistant Professor. WAXS.

Key Research Facilities and Infrastructure and Equipment

Membrane protein production, crystallisation, time-resolved diffraction and time-resolved WAXS. Infrastructure and facilities for cloning, production, purification, characterisation and crystallisation of membrane protein.

General Description

XtalConcepts GmbH is a spin-off company of the Universities of Hamburg and Lübeck funded in 2012. XtalConcepts offers extensive and unique experience in dynamic light scattering technologies and methods. The company is specialized in the design, development and manufacturing of systems for the production of protein crystals; handling, scoring as well as imaging of protein crystallization setups and protein solutions.

Role and Commitment of key persons (including supervisors)

Annette Eckhardt, PhD, Managing Director
Karsten Dierks, PhD, Head of Research and Development
Arne Meyer, PhD, Leading Scientist Structural Biology

Academic Supervisor
Christian Betzel, PhD, professor. Institut für Biochemie und Molekularbiologie, Universität Hamburg.

Key Research Facilities and Infrastructure and Equipment

Portfolio and facilities comprise particular advanced crystallization manipulation, applying the patented XtalController technology, pre-and post-crystallization screening facilities including automatic in-situ DLS (SpectroLight 600), cuvette DLS (SpectroSize 300) and flow through, advanced technologies like depolarized dynamic light scattering (DDLS), multichannel-DLS (UDLS) and space resolved DLS (ODLS). The company has fully equipped mechanical, optical and electronic laboratories.

General Description

Beamline ID9B provides intense x-ray pulses for time resolved experiments. The time resolution is most commonly obtained via pump-probe with short-pulse lasers triggering the sample. A new picosecond laser facility with an optical spectrometer should greatly facilitate future experiments. The beamline has high priority in the ESRF Upgrade Program (UPBL9b) and will double its user capacity from 2015. Four scientists, one technician and two shared engineers currently staff the beamline.

Role and Commitment of key persons (including supervisors)

Prof Michael Wulff will coordinate the time resolved SR experiments in the consortium. The goal is to combine information from optical/optical and optical/x-ray experiments to get better data with higher resolution in space and in time. Real-time data processing during the experiment will help the user to optimise the experimental parameters.

Key Research Facilities and Infrastructure and Equipment

ID9B provides laser and x-ray pulses for pump-probe experiments to 100-picosecond resolution. A chopper is used to isolate single pulses from suitable timing modes of the synchrotron. The x-ray optics provides three options: pink beam (3% bw), multilayer beam (1% bw) and crystal beam (0.01%). Reaction initiation is done with a picosecond or a nanosecond laser. The beamline has a high-speed Frelon camera and a 300 k Pilatus Detector. Finally an x-ray emission spectrometer is being commissioned which will allow taking electronic and structural data in parallel.

General Description

Prof Larsson’s group focuses on studying phase-transitions and shock waves in solid materials, in particular carbon materials such as graphite and amorphous carbon. We adapt X-ray methods such as Grazing incidence WAXS and Grazing-incidence diffraction to encompass the ultrafast time-domain. The group is developing a beamline (the Short Pulsed Facility) for ultrafast X-ray science at MAX IV and an electron diffraction set-up, which has advantages for studies of dilute samples and light elements.

Role and Commitment of key persons (including supervisors)

Jörgen Larsson, PhD, professor (20 %). Photonics, ultrafast X-ray science.
Henrik Enquist, PhD (15%), Scientist at MAX IV laboratory. ultrafast X-ray science.
Pererik Andreasson, PhD (20 %). Post-doctoral researcher in time-resolved X-ray diffraction.
Anna Persson, PhD student (30 %). Time-resolved diffraction.

Key Research Facilities and Infrastructure and Equipment

The group has key competences in ultrafast X-ray diffraction methodology, ultrafast laser technology and fast detectors. MAX IV will include a short-pulse facility providing sub-100 fs X-ray burst in the keV range.

General Description

The Chapman group focuses on pushing X-ray imaging beyond conventional resolution limits caused by radiation damage and technology. Short, intense X-ray pulses, from X-ray FEL sources, are used to out-run radiation damage processes. The interaction of these pulses with matter is studied, and methods of phase retrieval and coherent imaging are developed.

Role and Commitment of key persons (including supervisors)

Henry Chapman, PhD, W3 professor. X-ray optics and imaging.
Anton Barty, PhD, Senior Scientist. Instrumentation and analysis.
Thomas White, PhD, Research Fellow. Data analysis.
Lorenzo Galli, PhD student diffraction theory and X-ray-matter interaction.
Dominik Oberthuer, PhD, postdoc nanocrystal characterisation and data analysis.

Key Research Facilities and Infrastructure and Equipment

The group has key competence in X-ray optics, coherent imaging, and X-ray FEL instrumentation. The group utilizes a dedicated high-performance computer cluster for the analysis of over 20 million diffraction patterns recorded in initial LCLS experiments.

General Description

Molecular Links Rome (MoLiRom s.r.l.) is a spin-off Company of the “Sapienza” University of Rome. The mission of MoLiRom is focused on the development of advanced projects in the biosynthesis and production of protein based products including protein engineering based on random or site directed mutagenesis. The development of diagnostic and therapeutic nanodevices based on engineered recombinant proteins capable of recognizing specific tumor cell receptors is currently actively pursued. Protein on (silicon) chip technology for nanoscale Surface Plasmon Resonance measurements is currently ongoing.

Role and Commitment of key persons (including supervisors)

Alessandra Bonamore, PhD, leading scientist at MOLIROM, molecular biology and protein engineering.
Alberto Boffi
, MD, Chief Operating Officer at MOLIROM.
Pierpapolo Ceci, PhD, scientist at MoLiRom, expert in protein based nanocarriers for theranostic.

Academic Supervisor
Alberto Boffi, MD, full professor. Molecular Biology, Sapienza Università di Roma.

Key Research Facilities and Infrastructure and Equipment

Recombinant protein production and expression, random and site-selected mutagenesis, protein immobilization on activated silicon surfaces. Facilities comprise a fully equipped molecular biology lab, a pilot scale purification station, AFM and SEM microscopy.

General Description

The Department of Physics has long standing tradition in light induced phenomena and time resolved photo crystallography. Marco Cammarata (ESR main supervisor) has developed time-resolved solution scattering to follow protein structural change in solution and has worked at the world first Hard X-ray beamline (XPP) at a Free Electron Laser (LCLS).

Role and Commitment of key persons (including supervisors)

Marco Cammarata, PhD, CNRS researcher, former beamline scientist at LCLS and regular LCLS user
Eric Collet, PhD, Professor. Expert in Crystallography and photo crystallography (including time resolved)

Key Research Facilities and Infrastructure and Equipment

Time-resolved diffraction and time-resolved WAXS. In-house diffractometer. Analysis of Bragg and diffuse scattering. In-house femtosecond optical spectroscopy laboratory.

General Description

Astrazeneca is a global, innovation-driven, integrated biopharmaceutical company. Our mission is to make a meaningful difference to patient health through great medicines that bring benefit for patients and add value for our stakeholders and society. We discover, develop, manufacture and market prescription medicines and our primary focus is on three important areas of healthcare:

  1. Cardiovascular and Metabolic disease (CVMD);
  2. Oncology;
  3. Respiratory, Inflammation and Autoimmunity (RIA).

We are also active in the Infection, Neuroscience and Gastrointestinal (ING) disease areas. Astrazeneca has more than 51,000 employees worldwide. We invest over $4 billion in R&D each year and have around 9,000 people in our R&D organization.

Role and Commitment of key persons (including supervisors)

Margareta Ek, PhD, Associate Principal Scientist (20%).
Arjan Snijder, PhD, Associate Principle Scientist (10%) The Discovery Sciences department will engage actively in producing membrane proteins, biophysical characterization, crystallization and scattering and diffraction studies at synchrotron radiation sources.

Academic Supervisor
Gisela Brändén, PhD, Department of Chemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Gothenburg.

Key Research Facilities and Infrastructure and Equipment

The Discovery Sciences department in AstraZeneca has extensive experience in target protein production (soluble, secreted, membrane proteins, NHR, GPCRs, IC etc). The group is highly competent in membrane protein production, crystallization, biophysical characterization and screening. The infrastructure and facilities are state of the art, with probably the highest density of protein purification equipment in Europe.

General Description

The Prof Schertler’s group focuses on the structural biology of membrane proteins, particularly G protein coupled receptors. They use membrane protein crystallisation and X-ray diffraction. We are leading in the development of stabilized receptors trapping different states for structure determination. Pedrini’s group focuses on novel methods and algorithms for spectroscopic and scattering experiments at XFELs. They work closely with SwissFEL laser and machine scientists.

Role and Commitment of key persons (including supervisors)

Gebhard Schertler, PhD, Professor. Structural biology methods.
Dmitry Veprintsev, PhD, Senior Scientist. Membrane protein production, purification and biophysical analysis. Ching Ju Tsai, PhD, postdoc. Membrane protein production, purification and crystallisation.
Bill Pedrini, PhD. Responsible, diffract-&-destroy ptychography & cross-correlation scattering.
Bruce Patterson, PhD, professor. Scientific coordinator of the SwissFEL project, PI for terahertz pump-source application development.
Valerie Panneels, PhD, Senior Scientist. Lab Manager.
Rafael Abela, PhD. Project leader for SwissFEL photonics.

Key Research Facilities and Infrastructure and Equipment

Protein production and expression, random and site selected mutagenesis, protein immobilization on activated silicon surfaces. Facilities comprise a fully equipped molecular biology lab, a pilot scale purification station, AFM and SEM microscopy. Synchrotron radiation and X-ray free electron laser science and technology including X-ray beamline optics, experimental chambers and detectors. Access to the Swiss Light Source coherent X-ray scattering beamline (CSAXS) and 3 protein crystallography beamlines. In preparation for user operation of the SwissFEL hard X-ray laser in 2016, a 250 MeV test injector accelerator has been built and will be used for test experiments for XFEL seeding.

General Description

CSI is a company created by Sapienza University of Rome to support exploitation of research activities. CSI services are:

  1. Joint Labs: 17 multidisciplinary laboratories with private and public partners;
  2. Innovative spin-off enterprises: support to 20 new entrepreneurs;
  3. Technology Transfer: promote research exploitation by assistance to commercialization and licensing;
  4. National/Regional/EU funding opportunities: information, specialized organizational and managerial counseling, planning and technical assistance for the participation to calls.

Role and Commitment of key persons (including supervisors)

Riccardo Carelli is CSI responsible for EU funding activities from 2007 and coordinates 5 FP7 projects and manages administration and finance of a FP7 project. From 2003 to 2013: consultant at the Ministry of University and Research as FP7 National coordinator and FP7 NCP for Legal and Administrative Issues. FP6 NCP for Legal and Financial Issues, for SME Specific Actions and for the ERA NET. From 1999 to 2002: Project Officer at the European Commission (Enterprise Directorate General – Innovation Directorate, responsible for 10 IRC, 6 RITTS and 2 IRE projects). From 1990 to 1999: Technology Transfer Office of the CNR. From 2003 to date: Trainer at 62 training courses focused on FP related issues.
Stefania Della Corte managed several LLP projects and worked in the leading team of NotchIT, an FP7 ITN Marie Curie. She is managing ECONANO (TEMPUS project), COST Action IC1103 and she is working in the leading team of APPLES.