Diamond Light Source Scientists win two prestigious RSC Horizon prizes
The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) annually award Horizon prizes for exceptional achievements and scientific excellence. On 7 June they announced that scientists from the UK's national synchrotron, Diamond Light Source have been recognised as part of two collaborations that have won this year. One to develop Nanobodies against SARS-CoV-2 and the other for the discovery of chiral organic materials that allow high control of photon and electron spin.
CEO of Diamond, Prof. Andrew Harrison comments: "We are immensely proud of the contribution of our scientists and the Diamond facility itself, as these prizes are awarded only to teams or collaborations who are opening up new directions and possibilities in their field. Both teams have achieved ground-breaking scientific developments and their work underlines how Diamond is a hub for innovation in both Life and Physical Sciences. Huge congratulations to all involved."
The Nanobodies project won the 2022 Chemistry Biology Interface Division Horizon Prize, known as the Rita and John Cornforth Award.
A team led by The Rosalind Franklin Institute with collaborators from the Universities of Liverpool and Oxford, Diamond Light Source and Public Health England have developed tools for the fight against COVID-19. This large team involved nine specialists from Diamond.
The team's research has shown that nanobodies—a smaller, simple form of antibody generated by llamas and camels—can effectively target the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. They found that short chains of the molecules, which can be produced in large quantities in the laboratory, significantly reduced signs of the COVID-19 disease when administered to infected animal models.
Within weeks of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Profs. Ray Owens and James Naismith of the Rosalind Franklin Institute created the collaboration to develop nanobodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for causing COVID-19. As successful agents were created, they brought in partners at the UKHSA and Liverpool University to investigate their potential as a therapeutic agent.
"This project was an amazing example of teamwork, everyone had their own role to play and they were able to slot into the team and drive this work forward. The biggest challenge of this project was to keep up morale, a lot of this work was done during the first lockdown when no one really knew what was going to happen. The problem felt urgent and the team wanted to move as fast as possible to make an impact but it wasn't always that easy," explains Professor Jim Naismith
The agents developed by the team have now undergone animal trials, and show powerful therapeutic effects as a nasally delivered drug. This approach, it is hoped, can be applied to other emerging diseases. The unique combination of structural analytical and biological expertise at Harwell, alongside the enabling power of the Research Complex and Diamond Light Source made this collaboration successful in a way which would have been very hard to achieve elsewhere.
The collaboration took a skills-based approach as lockdown meant lab work was built around lone and shift working. Safety was paramount, so they used a strict pipeline approach with each researcher focusing on their key skills. This minimised the movement of researchers through physical areas (only the samples moved) and they worked in a shift pattern to both minimise crossover between researchers and maximise productivity. "This was pretty cool because it meant we all worked only to our strengths and dropped the aspects we are less good at," adds Dr. Halina Mikolajek, Research Scientist who is also responsible for the Crystallisation Facility at Harwell, based in the Research Complex adjacent to Diamond. "Jim Naismith led the computing and analysis and I focussed on producing crystals and collecting the data (both of which I love) and we were fast! To give a sense of speed, I went from protein delivery at 17:00, crystal plate set up at 18:00 to crystals the following morning at 9:00, cryocooling at 12:00 and data collection the following morning. Jim would then convert the data to structure at the end of that day."
Summing up their contribution; Halina said, "I am super proud of what was achieved in those first 4 months of Lockdown and take huge satisfaction that what we have jointly designed might be one of the treatments that will be offered to patients with COVID-19 in the near future. The working pattern of nights was tiring and I was pushing my limits in every way but I had the best and most productive time as a researcher ever. Not only in my 4.5 years at Diamond but across my entire career so far."
Other researchers from Diamond who participated in the Horizon collaboration with The Franklin were: Dan Clare—(Principal EM Scientist, eBIC), Peter Harrison—(Postdoctoral Research Associate in CryoEM, Membrane Protein Lab & eBIC, Julika Radecke—(EM Scientist, eBIC ), Prof. Sir David Stuart and Vinod Vogirala—EM Scientist, eBIC
"The virus behind the pandemic has numerous physio-chemical interactions. Likewise, the treatments for the disease involve more interactions with the human body in order to block the virus. Investigating and understanding these interactions at the molecular level using facilities like Diamond is essential to providing new vaccines and drugs to combat the global pandemic and play a key part in our preparedness to face future challenges," comments Prof. Sir David Stuart, Diamond Life Sciences Director and Professor of Structural Biology, Unversity of Oxford.
The Chiral Materials Team were awarded the 2022 Chemistry Division Horizon Prize known as the Stephanie L Kwolek Award for their discovery of chiral organic materials that allow high control of photon and electron spin
Lead groups from London, the Netherlands and Israel, worked in collaboration with a large international network of scientists, to develop chiral organics or photon/electron spin control.
The Team explained that a vast array of current and future technologies rely on the precise control of a fundamental property of electrons and light waves called spin. While current applications span computer memory and 3D displays, future opportunities range from quantum computing and sensing to high-performance displays and authentication products.
They have pioneered an alternative approach to control light wave and electron spin in organic materials through the use of a basic property of symmetry/shape called chirality. Objects, including molecules, are defined as chiral if they exist as a pair of "left handed" or "right handed" mirror images that cannot be superimposed. It is becoming increasingly apparent that chiral molecules have electronic and spintronic properties that are beyond what was previously understood.
Established strategies to achieve control of spin in these applications rely on materials and approaches that have serious limitations including excessive cost, complicated requirements for construction, and the need to operate at cryogenic temperatures. Carbon-based organic materials offer a considerable opportunity to overcome such limitations; however, organic materials do not traditionally allow for high control of spin. The team have used such behaviour to develop chiral materials that achieve very high spin control in organic materials at room temperature, opening the door to many future opportunities in applications reliant on spin.
"The ability to "see" at high spatial resolution the supramolecular structures of the chiral polymers assembly that dictate directly their optoelectronic property was not straight forward as it must be decomposed from other optical properties often present in the polymer films. If it can be seen, the process of screening material assemblies with the highest supramolecular structure can be controlled and optimised in a iterative manner. Diamond B23 CD imaging facility enables that, and it can be used to make the film preparation of chiral polymer reproducible that is the sine qua non for any commercial application," explains Giuliano Siligardi, Principal Beamline Scientist on B23 at Diamond.
ENDS
For further information: please contact Diamond Communications: Lorna Campbell +44 7836 625999 or Isabelle Boscaro-Clarke +44 1235 778130 Diamond Light Source: www.diamond.ac.uk Twitter: @DiamondLightSou
Diamond Light Source provides industrial and academic user communities with access to state-of-the-art analytical tools to enable world-changing science. Shaped like a huge ring, it works like a giant microscope, accelerating electrons to near light speeds, to produce a light 10 billion times brighter than the Sun, which is then directed off into 33 laboratories known as 'beamlines'. In addition to these, Diamond offers access to several integrated laboratories including the world-class Electron Bio-imaging Centre (eBIC) and the Electron Physical Science Imaging Centre (ePSIC).
Diamond serves as an agent of change, addressing 21st century challenges such as disease, clean energy, food security and more. Since operations started, more than 14,000 researchers from both academia and industry have used Diamond to conduct experiments, with the support of approximately 760 world-class staff. More than 10,000 scientific articles have been published by our users and scientists.
Funded by the UK Government through the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), and by Wellcome, Diamond is one of the most advanced scientific facilities in the world, and its pioneering capabilities are helping to keep the UK at the forefront of scientific research.
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