Project title : Molecular Approaches to Determination of Biomarkers for Diseases and Disease Susceptibility, and Development of Appropriate Techniques for Diagnosis

Executive Summary

Medical biotechnology provides wide opportunities to understand disease pathogenesis and to design more effective and specific means of diagnosis, management and control of diseases important in Malaysia. The knowledge and technologies generated by the explosion of molecular biology in medicine have resulted in new approaches to improving health care. The rapid adoption of such technologies in the Malaysian context is urgently required both in order to facilitate improvements in Malaysia health care as well as to seize market opportunities in the expanding medical biotechnology industry, especially with regards to diagnostics and novel vaccine.

The general objective of this research programme is to use molecular techniques and related tools to determine biomarkers for disease states and disease susceptibility for infectious and non-infectious disease, and to use the knowledge acquired to design diagnostic tools and vaccine for improved management, control and surveillance of important disease in Malaysia. The programme will comprise of research projects for the development of rapid diagnostic kits for parasiticand viral diseases, identification of disease susceptibility genes and biomarkers in selected cancers, study of B and T cell epitopes involved in protection and parthogenesis of selected infectious diseases and study of oligonucleotide sequence useful for specific diagnosis or as DNA vaccine candidates.

The use of biosensors will be incorporated in the above, as and when, relevant. The expected outputs from the projects include knowledge about protective epitopes encoded by various etiological agents, knowledge of DNA vaccine design for locally important parthogens, recombinant peptides and proteins for use in second generation diagnostic tests, oligonucleotide probes for susceptibility monitoring and disease diagnosis, new diagnostic tests and candidate vaccines.

The direct beneficiaries of the projects include the community of scientists who will benefit from knowledge generated, the community of doctors who will the availability of improved diagnostic tools, the community whose health will improve with the more effective control of disease and reduction of morbidity and mortality and the biotechnology industry in Malaysia which will benefit with the introduction of new products into the Malaysian portfolio, and with a concomitant increase in experience and skills. In the initial stages of the projects, outputs will be disseminated by publication in various scientific journals and presentation at seminars.


Project Leader : Dr. Patricia Lim Kim Choi (IMR) & Mary Jane Cardosa (UNIMAS)

Institution : Institute for Medical Research, Kuala Lumpur (IMR)
University of Malaysia Sarawak , Kota Samarahan , Sarawak (UNIMAS)

 

In the next stage, second generation kits for the diagnosis of various diseases will be designed and commercialised. Candidate vaccines will produced for trials. All these activities will make the Medical Biotechnology Group and Coordinating Center to be recognised internationally.

Objective Achievement

The project objectives have been fully achieved. We have been able to develop four diagnostic tests for both selected viral and parasitic diseases using different technologies including the hybridoma, recombinant fusion protein as well as PCR technologies. Some of these diagnostic tests are in the process of being commercialized. In the study of vaccines, various vaccine delivery systems were tested and several vaccine candidates were identified from viruses such as dengue and JEV. Arising from these studies, 3 patents have been filed by UNIMAS.

Benefits of the Project

Outputs of this project include the following:

i) 4 diagnostic tests developed for malaria, human toxocariasis, dengue, Japanese encephalitis.

ii) Human resource development: Under this project, there were 6 Masters and 2 Ph.D's candidates. Thus the project contributed immensely towards postgraduate training of young scientists in the country, particularly in new areas of technology such as biotechnology/molecular biology.

iii) Dissemination of research findings:These included 5 publications in international journals, 22 conference papers, 3 patents and 47 sequences filed. Knowlegde acquired from this project was therefore disseminated effectively on an international level.