Bio­cen­ter Oulu launched a BioParts ERDF project

Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu Bio­cen­ter Oulu’s research infra­struc­ture ser­vices relat­ed to bio­mol­e­cules: struc­tur­al biol­o­gy, pro­tein analy­sis and bio­com­put­ing, have launched a BioParts project fund­ed by the Euro­pean Region­al Devel­op­ment Fund. The project aims to cre­ate a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary research and devel­op­ment plat­form for the stud­ies of bio­log­i­cal nanopar­ti­cles by widen­ing the instru­ments and tech­nolo­gies avail­able through Bio­cen­ter Oulu. 

Bio­cen­ter Oulu main­tains and devel­ops life sci­ences and bio­med­ical research infra­struc­ture ser­vices and offers them on an open-access prin­ci­ple to sup­port research and devel­op­ment projects of aca­d­e­m­ic and oth­er cus­tomers.  Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar ser­vices focus espe­cial­ly on sup­port­ing research of pro­teins, but also oth­er bio­log­i­cal par­ti­cles, and relat­ed prod­uct devel­op­ment.

Nanopar­ti­cles are a diverse group of very small par­ti­cles, rang­ing in size from nanome­ters to microm­e­ters, and con­sist­ing of one or more dif­fer­ent mol­e­cules. The spe­cif­ic phys­i­cal and chem­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of nanopar­ti­cles, such as large sur­face area rel­a­tive to vol­ume, opti­cal and elec­tri­cal prop­er­ties, and the abil­i­ty to act as car­ri­ers or cat­a­lysts, make them valu­able in many active research fields. Nanopar­ti­cles are applied in var­i­ous fields, includ­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal trans­porta­tion, mate­r­i­al devel­op­ment, and envi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate ana­lyt­ics.  The impor­tance of nanopar­ti­cles as research sub­jects in life sci­ences and bio­med­i­cine has increased with the devel­op­ment of new research meth­ods. The invest­ment project will pro­vide new enabling tech­nolo­gies for inter­dis­ci­pli­nary fields of bio­nanopar­ti­cle research and devel­op­ment. 

The BioParts project focus­es on enhanc­ing ser­vices for char­ac­ter­iz­ing the struc­tur­al prop­er­ties, behav­ior, and dynam­ics of bio­log­i­cal nanopar­ti­cles, includ­ing macro­mol­e­c­u­lar com­plex­es and vesi­cles, using state-of-the-art meth­ods in mass spec­trom­e­try, 3D struc­tur­al analy­sis, and in sil­i­co mod­el­ing and sim­u­la­tion. The R&D ser­vices pro­vid­ed will have appli­ca­tions in diag­nos­tics, sep­a­ra­tion meth­ods, biosen­sors, and nanoscale struc­tur­al stud­ies, help­ing mate­r­i­al design and the atmos­phere and envi­ron­ment research, and lead­ing to the devel­op­ment of new ther­a­peu­tics. Bio­nanopar­ti­cles can be used to devel­op more accu­rate diag­nos­tic meth­ods and more effec­tive treat­ments, for exam­ple, for can­cer, inflam­ma­tion, or neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases that are active­ly stud­ied in Oulu Uni­ver­si­ty.   

The invest­ments will be used to expand Bio­cen­ter Oulu’s ser­vices and sup­port the research of nanopar­ti­cles and the pro­duc­ti­za­tion of research results. Machine learn­ing and AI can be used today to increase the effec­tive­ness of research ser­vices. The project also looks into the devel­op­ment of a com­pu­ta­tion­al envi­ron­ment util­is­ing machine learn­ing for nanopar­ti­cle data ana­lyt­ics and work­flows, and to devel­op sim­u­la­tions and mod­el­ing.  

The BioParts project start­ed in May 2025 and will con­tin­ue until the end of 2027. To ini­ti­ate com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the local com­mu­ni­ty, we will par­tic­i­pate in the Uni­ver­si­ty Busi­ness Forum in Octo­ber 2025 and orga­nize a webi­nar series on bio­nanopar­ti­cle research and appli­ca­tions dur­ing Spring 2026. 

Con­tact per­son

Outi Lam­pela

Project man­ag­er, Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu

outi.lampela@oulu.fi

Source: Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu