UPWr PhD student gets a Preludium grant

In her doctoral thesis, Agata Matera focused on designing and producing enzymatic cascades for glycosylation of flavonoid compounds using synthetic biology tools. The project, for which she received a grant of PLN 70,000, is titled “A universal and efficient platform for the enzymatic glucosylation of steroids.”

– Steroids have anti-inflammatory, immunosuppressive, and anti-cancer properties. This triad makes them one of the most significant groups of drugs in modern medicine. However, their broad spectrum of activity means that, alongside therapeutic effects, they also cause side effects, particularly with prolonged use – explains Agata Matera. She adds that research aimed at modifying and obtaining new steroid compounds, which could form the basis for developing drugs with better therapeutic properties, offers the chance to minimize these unwanted effects. This is why such research is crucial and attracts considerable interest, not only within the scientific community.

As the doctoral student at the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences explains, one way to modify steroid compounds is through glycosylation, the process of attaching a sugar molecule to them. This process not only improves the stability of various chemical compounds but also enhances their water solubility. Importantly, it can also modify the biological properties of the molecule.

– But chemical glycosylation of steroid compounds is expensive and complicated. Hence my project, which builds on the idea from my PhD, involves using enzymatic reactions to carry out these modifications. Additionally, the use of enzymes in a cascade eliminates the need for expensive cofactors, reducing the cost – says Agata Matera, who has used biocatalysis and synthetic biology methods to produce flavonoid glycosides, valued for their antioxidant activity. These compounds are found in fruits, vegetables, and red wine, but in small amounts and are unstable, which complicates their use in large-scale laboratory studies and future production of supplements or drugs on an industrial scale.

In her one-year project, Agata Matera plans to select steroid glucosyltransferases, assess their substrate specificity, and evaluate their ability to cooperate with sucrose synthase in a self-sustaining glucosylation cascade.

– The research I'm conducting is at the intersection of synthetic biology and organic chemistry. The basis for producing the studied enzymes will be modified Escherichia coli strains, and I will test the selected enzymes for their usefulness on a larger scale – explains the PhD student from UPWr. She hopes that the cascade developed in her project will become a convenient and cost-effective platform for glucosylating various steroid compounds. This would not only facilitate their evaluation for therapeutic properties but could also be a good starting point for producing new drugs.

– I’m also interested in protein engineering, which has now completely revolutionized biocatalysis research, and I would like to conduct studies in this area in the future – notes the doctoral student from UPWr. She adds that her internship at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability at the Technical University of Denmark, where she worked on the thermostability of sucrose synthase, allowed her to delve into this field.

Agata Matera wrote her PhD under the supervision of Professor Ewa Huszcza from the Department of Food Chemistry and Biocatalysis at UPWr. The defense of her thesis is planned for later this year.

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  Scientific councils of PIWET and IZ with scientists from UPWr

  The Ministers of Agriculture and of Science and Higher Education have appointed professors from the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences to the scientific councils of two institutes. Prof. Zdzisław Kiełbowicz will serve another term on the Scientific Council of the National Veterinary Institute, while Prof. Andrzej Zachwieja joins the Scientific Council of the Institute of Animal Husbandry. Prof. Mariusz Korczyński is also a member of the IZ's Scientific Council.