Dr. Mike Miley is co-PI, along with Dr. TinChung Leung of UNC State, on one of six three-year grants funded by the University of North Carolina General Administration to support game-changing faculty research in areas of strategic importance to the state.
The University of North Carolina General Administration has awarded six three-year grants totaling nearly $9 million to support game-changing faculty research in areas of strategic importance to the state. Each of the funded projects involves faculty partners from two or more UNC campuses.
Dr. Mike Miley, Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Director of the UNC Protein Expression and Purification Core Facility, is co-PI on the project along with Dr. TinChung Leung, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at NC State University.
The project, which is “Bioengineering microalgae for large-scale production of therapeutic antibodies against Ebola, West Nile virus and rabies,” will receive $600,000 over 3 years.
The deadly Ebola virus could potentially affect more than a million patients in 2015. The experimental drug ZMapp has been effective in saving patients who were critically ill, yet it is in short supply, and the production process takes several months to generate even small amounts of the drug. To fill this gap, researchers at NCCU, UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State will use a microalgae system to generate anti-Ebola antibodies rapidly and cost-effectively. As unicellular plants, algae can be cultured continuously to produce therapeutic proteins. Using bioengineered microalgae will speed up the biomanufacturing process of therapeutic antibodies against Ebola and other diseases.
Dr. Miley’s role in the project will be the purification of the antibodies that are being produced in the micro-algae system.
The Protein Expression and Purification (PEP) core specializes in the production of pure, functional proteins for structural, biophysical, and biochemical studies.
The Protein Expression and Purification Core Facility is part of the UNC Center for Structural Biology, which is comprised of six core research facilities. It is specifically designed as a “front-end” interface to other components of the Center for Structural Biology (CSB). However, the ability to produce and purify milligram amount of protein enables a broad array of applications and research that extend far beyond the bounds of structural biology, as protein reagents are essential to most areas of biomedical research.
The Protein Expression and Purification Core Facility is open and available to UNC researchers as well as researchers at non-UNC academic institutions and commercial companies.