Botnar Research Centre launches research activities
The Botnar Research Centre for Child Health (BRCCH) announces its first four multi-investigator projects and thus the start of its research activities. D-BSSE professor Randall Platt will have the lead of a project which aims to develop a CRISPR-based technology involving engineered bacteria which are capable of sensing, remembering, and reporting on the environment within the gut.
The project “Living Microbial Diagnostics to Enable Individualized Child Health Interventions” is motivated by the fact that malnutrition, infectious diseases and inflammatory conditions remain leading causes of illness in children living in low-and-middle income countries. In times of sickness and chronic illness, our gut microbes undergo genetic and physiological changes in response to the effects of insults such as infection or disease on the human body. Therefore, the monitoring of the changes in the gut microbiome has the potential to serve as a functional readout of the status of our health. In this project, the team led by Randall Platt aims to develop a CRISPR-based technology involving engineered bacteria which are capable of sensing, remembering, and reporting on the environment within the gut. These bacteria will be utilized to provide an assessment of the nutritional, infection, and inflammation status of the gut and thereby provide a basis for individualizing and improving medical and lifestyle interventions for children and adolescents in the future. Other team members include: Professor Uwe Sauer from ETH Zurich, Professor Dirk Bumann from the University of Basel and Professor Andrew Macpherson from the University of Berne.
On 19 September 2018, the University of Basel and ETH Zurich co-founded the external page Botnar Research Centre for Child Health (BRCCH) in Basel. The Centre is funded by a CHF 100 million contribution from the external page Fondation Botnar. BRCCH is in operation as of January 2019, headed by Georg Holländer (Director BRCCH, Professor for Paediatric Immunology at the University of Basel and head of the Department of Paediatrics, University of Oxford) and Sai Reddy, (Vice-Director BRCCH, D-BSSE Professor for Systems and Synthetic Immunology).
The Centre brings together experts from basic research, engineering, translational science, clinical science as well as ethical, legal and economic experts to ensure the implementation of innovative healthcare solutions that can also be successfully applied in low- and middle-income countries. Institutions involved in the BRCCH include the Basel-based ETH-Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE) and other Zurich-based ETH departments, the University of Basel including its Children's Hospital, the University Hospital and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute.
In total, 28 applications were handed in in response to the first call for multi-investigator programmes (MIPs) by 15 July 2019. Grant support was decided on 6 December 2019. The chosen projects are supposed to start within the first months of 2020. The Principal Investigators will present their projects on the inaugural external page Spotlight Day of the BRCCH on 30 January 2020 at the Zentrum für Lehre und Forschung of the University Hospital Basel.
Find the external page BRCCH media information.
Find two interviews conducted with BRCCH Director Georg Holländer, Professor for Paediatric Immunology at the University of Basel and head of the Department of Paediatrics, University of Oxford, and his Deputy Sai Reddy, D-BSSE Associate Professor for Systems and Synthetic Immunology, ETH Zurich:
Botnar Research Centre ramping up first activities for improving child health;
Botnar Research Centre’s vision on implementing tangible solutions for child health.