CHAIN has worked closely with the University of Nottingham since our beginning, and it is our pleasure to announce Anastasiya Buryak the winner of the CHAIN Biotechnology Award for Best Student Ambassador for Biotech and Best Academic Performance. CHAIN attended the award ceremony last week at the University’s Sutton-Bonnington Campus and we caught up with Anastasiya for a quick interview about her thoughts on biotech and her plans for the future.
What do you like about studying biotech?
What fascinates me the most about studying Biotechnology is that it allows the exploration of multiple disciplines, whether it is microbiology, nanotechnology, agriculture or pharmacology. I value that Biotechnology effectively uses biological principles to develop revolutionary technologies and products which positively impact on health, medicine, food and the environment. There are no limits to knowledge exploration and what ideas you can bring to this discipline.
Anastasiya (left) meets Emily at the Award’s Reception
What have you achieved as student ambassador for biotech last year?
Being a student ambassador for biotech is not just about presenting the Biotechnology course and university to visitors, leading a group of prospective students around campus or talking about student life. For me it is so much more: it is about demonstrating how important it is to study science and what benefits it can bring to humanity. What I enjoy the most as a student ambassador is meeting new people and share my passion, views and experiences with them. Sometimes I get a chance to meet ‘academically disoriented’ students, who have a great interest in biology and its applications but struggle to choose a particular course. And I learned to use this opportunity to help them understand what Biotechnology is about and how it revolutionised the scientific world. It is especially relevant to me, as I was at that stage whilst doing my A-levels. Similar to any student, I went through stressful and significant time choosing what I want to do in the future. Importantly whilst doing laboratory demonstrations during open days, I conveyed my enthusiasm in studying biotechnology and learned how to encourage and motivate students to study this course.
Emily (left) congratulates Anastasiya after receiving her award.
What would you like to do after graduation?
I am currently going into my third year of Biotechnology at the University of Nottingham and my career plan is to contribute to the healthcare industry. I have an interest in the pharmaceutical industry, in particular working on the development of novel drugs and cosmetics products, which will significantly advance public health, improve patient care and benefit customer needs. Among the main principles, I live my life by is “Be useful for this world! Target your energy on making this world a healthier and safer place”. Therefore after graduation, I see myself working in a company with a scientific environment among talented individuals. I hope to meet with various every day challenges whilst generating extraordinary and influential ideas, which have the potential to make life better. Constant learning and collaborating with others is what, I believe, will help me and others to achieve a valuable and unique contribution to improving human health.
Oxford, UK – 2nd July 2019
Oxford Vacmedix UK Limited (OVM), the UK-based biopharma company focused on the development of cancer vaccines, announced today the award of an Innovate UK grant to CHAIN Biotechnology Ltd (CHAIN) and the University of Oxford to develop live biotherapeutics that support oral delivery for OVM’s recombinant overlapping peptide (ROP) cancer vaccines. The research will use CHAIN’s proprietary microbiome technology and the world-class research facilities in the University’s department of Oncology.
The project will initially focus on OVM-100 in a research project titled “Mucosal delivery of Clostridium spores encoding recombinant overlapping peptides (ROPs) of HPV antigen as therapeutic vaccines for cervical cancer”. This will bring together University of Oxford’s expertise and CHAIN’s innovative microbial delivery platform to establish the effectiveness of delivering ROPs to the colon for the treatment of cervical cancer.
Spun out from the University of Oxford, OVM holds an exclusive licence for the ROP technology. The technology uses the novel, proprietary platform of ROPs to design and develop therapeutic cancer vaccines and diagnostics with the potential for increased efficacy, lower costs, simpler regulatory pathways and synergy when used in combination with other immune-oncology agents. OVM is developing two cancer vaccines, OVM-100 and OVM-200, focusing on unmet clinical need. OVM-100 is an HPV vaccine targeted at cervical cancer. OVM-200 represents a new type of vaccine utilising survivin, a protein inhibitor of apoptosis, to target solid tumours.
Dr Shisong Jiang, Principal Investigator in the Department of Oncology and Founder of OVM, said:
“We are delighted to have this opportunity to work with CHAIN on this exciting project. The importance of effective and controlled delivery is key to the development of new cancer vaccine and we are very pleased to have support and funding from Innovate UK for this work on our immunotherapy cancer vaccines.”
Dr Edward Green, Chief Executive and Founder of CHAIN added:
“This project provides a further opportunity to exemplify our Clostridium-Assisted Drug Development (CADDTM) platform for targeted gut delivery of therapeutic peptides. We look forward to a successful collaboration with OVM and to establishing a combination approach that simplifies and accelerates the development of oral cancer vaccines providing significant patient benefits.”
For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact:
William Finch, CEO, Oxford Vacmedix
T: +44 (0) 1865 742087 | M: +44(0)7769 903711 | E: wfinch@oxfordvacmedix.com
https://www.oxfordvacmedix.com
About Oxford Vacmedix
Oxford Vacmedix UK Ltd, based on the Oxford Science Park, UK, is a bio-pharma company that utilizes the novel proprietary platform technology of recombinant overlapping peptides (ROPs) invented by Dr Shisong Jiang. ROPs have been validated as a technology to stimulate broad and strong T cell immunity therefore forming a good platform for cancer therapeutic vaccines and diagnostics. The company is a spin-out of the University of Oxford and has extensive contacts and collaborations in China through Changzhou Bioscience that is using the ROP platform in both diagnostics and adoptive cell therapy.
For more information, please visit: www.oxfordvacmedix.com/
About CHAIN Biotech
CHAIN Biotechnology Ltd is a UK-based microbiome therapeutic company focused on the development and commercialisation of live biotherapeutic products (LBPs). LBPs are a new class of drug based on living bacteria found in the gut but engineered to deliver specific therapeutic molecules. We specialise in engineering Clostridia bacteria and our proprietary technology platform (CADDTM), based on a single bacterial species, supports multiple therapeutic products. CHAIN’s products address unmet clinical needs for safer, more effective and lower cost drugs. Treatments for diseases associated with the human gut microbiome have the potential to transform healthcare across many chronic and debilitating diseases. CHAIN was founded in 2014, by biotech entrepreneur Dr Edward Green and has labs at MediCity Nottingham with a head office in Marlow. CHAIN has assembled a highly experienced management team and Board comprising biotech and pharma leaders plus expert scientists with skills in microbiology, engineering biology and fermentation.
For more information, please visit: https://chainbiotech.com