Institute of Biochemistry of the Romanian Academy

IBRA hosts a state of the art research facility center in biomedical proteomics, operated by an interdisciplinary team of young researchers with backgrounds in biochemistry, chemistry, biophysics, biology, pharmacy. The Institute of Biochemistry of the Romanian Academy aims: a) to lead competitive research in Molecular Life Sciences to the advantage of the society; b) to promote Protein Science in Romania, by undertaking projects related to protein function, synthesis and trafficking with practical impact in biomedicine, nano- & bio-technologies; c) to educate MSc & PhD students and Post-docs in Biochemistry and Applied Biosciences.

Role within COMBINE

The IBRA team builds on expertise in viral glycoprotein folding and trafficking to develop innovative designs and platforms for production of novel (glycoengineered) HBV/HCV vaccine candidates, in close collaboration with the Department of Bioinformatics from the institute.This expertise will be used in the current project proposal to produce glycoengineered MARV GP-derived antigens for validation of protein-protein interaction, antiviral assay development, immunopeptidomics and vaccine candidates formulation. We will also design and validate functional insertions in MARV GP to be used for proximity labeling interactomics relying on our experience in constructing functional recombinant viruses to be used in host-pathogen interaction studies.