09.05.2023Call for partnerships by Adriano Aguzzi for a TRANSFORM funding application; Deadline June 1st-2023

Over the past years, my laboratory has developed two human genome wide arrayed plasmid libraries termed “T.spiezzo” (gene ablation, 19,936 plasmids) and “T.gonfio” (gene activation and epigenetic silencing, 22,442 plasmids). See: Robust and Versatile Arrayed Libraries for Human Genome-Wide CRISPR Activation, Deletion and Silencing | bioRxiv. These tools allow for the individual interrogation of every human protein-coding gene. This extremely powerful technology is not generally available in academic or commercial laboratories at present, and therefore gives us a competitive edge.

Our lab has perfected a protocol for the packaging of the libraries in lentiviruses, and we can now produce 1’500 individual lentiviruses every week. Besides being used in our lab, these libraries and were shared with selected collaborators in several labs worldwide, and have been non-exclusively licensed to pharma. Inter alia, Novartis has deployed our libraries company-wide and is using them at its research sites in Basel, Cambridge MA and La Jolla.

We haven’t yet found a mechanism to make these unique reagents available to our own colleagues at UZH. This is unfortunate, as there is much interest in genetic-perturbation screens within the UZH research community. It is my intention to change this situation and make our reagents and expertise available to all interested scientists in the UZH academic environment.

I am therefore planning to submit a TRANSFORM grant proposal to UZH, with the goal to enable the access of the research community in Zurich to these toolsets and to the research data generated therefrom by providing the following services: 

• generate genome-wide and focused lentiviral libraries from our library plasmids and provide them to the research community through a unified platform;
• provide practical training, protocols and standards to interested users.
• host in our institute interested users wishing to perform gene-perturbation screens who may not avail of the technical requirements at their institute.

My lab has championed open access to research data and resources for more than 20 years. With the framework described above, we would add to the strengths of UZH by developing a platform dedicated to the sharing of CRISPR-related resources. We will contribute our libraries and the necessary knowledge for their use. We find that this is a fitting addition to UZH, which has been in the forefront of CRISPR-related research.

If you are interested in using the CRISPR libraries described above, please get in touch with me. What I would need from you is a short abstract (max 1 page) covering the following points:

• A concise description of one or more genomic-perturbation screens that you are interested in performing.
• An impact statement (Why is it important to do it? What are the expected advancements in knowledge)
• A statement of the resources required. Please note that the TRANSFORM grant, if awarded, will cover the generation and transfer of CRISPR reagents, the training of your personnel, and possibly certain aspects of the primary CRISPR screens. It will not cover your local direct expenses for the full execution of your project.

The official deadline for the submission of the grant proposal is June 1st, meaning that you would need to provide me with your draft ideally until the end of next week. I will then collate all expressions of interest and generate a cohesive and convincing application to the TRANSFORM program with them.

Best wishes,
Adriano Aguzzi 

Prof. Adriano Aguzzi
Institute of Neuropathology
University of Zurich
Rämistrasse 100
8091 Zurich
Switzerland