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02
Annual Report 2008
Management report
Structural report
18
Annual Report 2008
2.1.6 Development of departmental research areas
2.1.6.1 Health & Environment
The Health & Environment Department strives for excellence in applied research and for new
technological solutions benefiting the environment and health. The department‘s central research
thrust is understanding biological systems, opening the way for the development of new medical,
health and environmental technologies.
Imaging molecular processes
Molecular processes at the blood-brain barrier were investigated using micro-positron emission
tomography (PET) — a nuclear medicine imaging procedure. The blood-brain barrier is the body‘s
own protection mechanism, preventing toxic substances and pathogens from reaching the brain
through the bloodstream. This useful barrier becomes a problem when drugs which are meant to
act on the brain cannot reach their site of action. A regional overexpression of the P-glycoprotein
(P-gp) drug transporter at the blood-brain barrier could be responsible for the fact that a third of all
epilepsy patients fail to respond to drugs. It is assumed that the transporter (P-gp) pumps antiepileptic
drugs from the brain back into the blood, preventing sufficient concentrations of the drug
from reaching the epileptic tissue. Additional administration of P-gp inhibitors is a promising
approach to overcoming this therapy resistance. However, there has been no appropriate method
for checking the effectiveness of these substances to date.
The Department developed a new method for measuring P-gp inhibition at the blood-brain barrier
in a pre-clinical project. This novel method is based on applying the microPET procedure to
visualise the distribution of the model P-gp substrate [11C] Verapamil in the brain. It was shown
that absorption of [11C] Verapamil increases 11-fold once the highest dose of the P-gp inhibitor is
given. Using this new procedure, it was possible to determine the effective doses of two new P-gp
inhibitors (tariquidar and elacridar) for optimum inhibition of P-gp at the blood-brain barrier. The
process developed is excellently suited to determining the effectiveness of new P-gp inhibitors in
clinical studies on humans.
The study findings won the Drug Discovery Image of the Year award at the Siemens Preclinical
Imaging international award ceremony in Nice.
Genetic repository centre for future plant use
In 2008 the only genetic repository centre for plants of its kind in Europe was set up in Seibersdorf
as part of the EU‘s Evoltree network of excellence. Besides providing the resource centre, ARC
is also the central knowledge and database node in this network. The DNA of more than 300,000
genes from trees, insects and fungi have been stored in the world‘s first automated biobank for
forest genetic resources, the construction of which was completed in 2008. The collection of entire
genomes from 3,500 trees across Europe is also ongoing. These valuable resources can be used
to investigate the reactions of plants to environmental influences and stressors and as reference
samples. Standardised sample materials make research findings comparable, increasing their
usefulness to the forestry and wood-processing industries. By acting as a data network node, ARC
links forestry databases at partner institutions in Europe so that information stored at different sites
is searchable via a single online access point (www.evoltree.eu).
The aim of this information portal is to integrate research activities, thereby reducing fragmentation
in the European research landscape. The resource centre is the platform for a number of future
smart breeding research projects. Smart breeding technologies exploit natural genetic variety to
breed desired characteristics by applying modern molecular biological methods without inserting
foreign genes into the plant‘s genome. In addition to plant applications, the genetic repository
centre is also being extended to include microorganisms.