Team:Tuebingen

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BoNT

It is what makes us the person that we are, it is the origin of our actions and feelings - and yet it remains one of our greatest mysteries: the brain.

New methods allow us to shed light on the dark further and further and help to understand us exceedingly better.

With our ideas and commitment, we want to contribute to - and help to promote research in this area.

Introduction

In modern medicine treatment options involve many substances modified from natural sources, occasionally even toxins. We use atoxic botulinum neurotoxin C and couple it with a variety of substances while not losing its specific shuttle mechanism for neuronal cells. In detail, we develop a toolbox of different detoxified botulinum toxin derivatives which can accommodate other proteins, small molecules, and fluorochromes by specific linkers.

To investigate the influence of the point mutations leading to detoxification in the active site, we conduct MD simulations.

Since our shuttle mechanism could potentially be used in patients, we remove the most prevalent immune epitopes by a theoretical bioinformatics approach. Ultimately, our system is supposed to be utilized for therapy strategies and specific neuronal targeting in basic research.

With our project we want to encourage future teams to think outside the box while keeping safety in mind.