ALADDIN partners in the spotlight:
Linköping University
We continue with our article series presenting the partners of the ALADDIN project consortium. This time, we sat down with Lasse Jensen from Linköping University to discuss his team’s role in ALADDIN and why zebrafish are so relevant for the success of the project.
Lasse Jensen is a Senior Associate Professor at Linköping University in southern Sweden, where he leads a laboratory specialised in zebrafish models.
In the ALADDIN project, Jensen’s team is in charge of transplanting tumours from cancer patients into zebrafish embryos to study the effectiveness of nanobodies against them.
“We set up a system for quickly screening new nanobody drug candidates, developed by the other ALADDIN consortium members, in zebrafish.”
Zebrafish at the forefront of cancer research
But why zebrafish? While they might seem distant from humans as a species, up to 80 per cent of the genes that cause disease in us are present in these fish.
“In most cases, any genetic or protein abnormality that causes human disease can also be found in zebrafish,” Jensen ensures.
Mice are commonly used as experimental animals in research, but zebrafish have multiple benefits over them, both in terms of efficacy and ethics.
For example, where results might take up to three months to develop in mice, readouts from zebrafish models can become available in only a few days. Moreover, 200–300 zebrafish can be implanted with tumours daily, enabling the testing of up to 20 drugs in a day.
From an ethical standpoint, Jensen emphasises the need to reduce the use of research animals. Zebrafish embryos have minimal awareness and a limited ability to feel pain or distress. They are also visually transparent, facilitating the observation of the evolution of the tumours and reducing the need for invasive procedures.
Speeding up drug development
In ALADDIN, Jensen’s team modifies zebrafish genetically. Although zebrafish have a gene that also causes disease in humans, its structure is different. The researchers at Linköping want to exchange this gene in zebrafish with the human one, thus enabling the zebrafish to produce the human version of the gene for drug testing.
“We have injected the gene into several fish and are evaluating which could carry this human protein.”
The acceleration of tumour modelling in zebrafish ties perfectly with the overall goal of the ALADDIN project, which is to make nanobody development and screening quicker and more efficient for producing new treatments.
“The nanobody development platform envisioned in ALADDIN could dramatically speed up the drug development process,” Jensen says.
To enable this, the ALADDIN consortium brings together a mix of expertise ranging from biology, genetics, and in vivo technologies to microfluidics, artificial intelligence, and mathematical modelling.
“It’s a cauldron of many ingredients perfectly calibrated to each other.”
Taking research beyond the scientific publication
In ALADDIN, the diversity of backgrounds expands beyond disciplines, but also sectors. Academic institutions seamlessly collaborate with companies to make the project vision a reality.
“Researchers release the results of their work to the world by publishing them, but that will not impact society. Companies can take them further,” Jensen says.
In his case, industry-academia collaboration is an everyday reality. In 2015, Jensen founded BioReperia, a company specialised in zebrafish xenograft models. BioReperia can commercialise the results generated in the project by Jensen’s team at Linköping, such as the genetically modified zebrafish, and make them available for further use and development.
“It’s important that, as academic partners, we take what we develop beyond the scientific sphere and create an impact on society with our science.”
Read other articles published in the ALADDIN partners in the spotlight series:
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