For the last week, scientists on the Bertarelli Foundation’s expedition to the Chagos Archipelago in the British Indian Ocean Territory have been carrying out research in a wide range of ecosystems. Dominic Andradi-Brown, from the University of Oxford, is taking part in the expedition and has provided the following update about the work he has been conducting in the ‘twighlight’ or mesophotic zone:
For the past week Catherine Head and I from Oxford’s Ocean Research and Conservation (ORC) group have been lucky enough to take part in the Bertarelli Foundation funded expedition. We’re involved in studying the health of the reefs, particularly in the face of widespread coral bleaching which is currently occurring across the globe. In addition to this reef health monitoring, a major focus for my work is to conduct some of the first exploration of the twilight zone reefs of the Chagos Archipelago.
The twilight zone, known scientifically as mesophotic coral ecosystems, includes coral reefs from 30m to 150m depth. These reefs are characterised by light dependent ecosystems, but are adapted to very low levels of light. Due to the remote nature of the archipelago, diver surveys have only been listed to a maximum depth of 25m, meaning that most mesophotic reefs have never been scientifically surveyed.
Large fragile sea fans were observed in the mesophotic zone at 58m
So why are we interested in the twilight zone? Many of the impacts that cause most damage on shallow reefs in Chagos, for example processes such as coral bleaching and direct storm damage, are believed to decline in severity at greater depths. This means that twilight zone reefs may act as a refuge for shallow reef life.
We’re using a remote operated vehicle (ROV) to survey the upper twilight zone around the Chagos Archipelago in the 30-60m depth range. Already we’ve had many exciting findings! For example, the charismatic Chagos Clownfish (Amphiprion chagosensis), found only in Chagos, had previously been found down to 25m, we’ve extended that known depth range down to 37m after documenting several individuals in an anemone off Peros Banhos in the north of the archipelago earlier in the expedition.
The endemic Chagos Clownfish (Amphiprion chagosensis) was seen at 37m swimming next to a sea anemone
The structure of the reef changes a lot in the twilight zone. One of the most common corals found on the shallow reefs belong to the genus Porites. On shallow reefs these corals have distinctive rounded boulder shapes. At twilight depths we’ve documented very flattened plate-like Porites colonies. We think this change in shape is an adaptation to the lower light levels on these deeper reefs, as this pattern has been observed on twilight reefs elsewhere in the world. However, researchers are still trying to understand the advantages to corals of becoming flatter, particularly at the fine scale (something Jack Laverick in the ORC group is actively working on).
As well as the seabed reef-specific twilight zone surveys, when deploying the ROV we’ve often found lots of sharks at twilight depths. Mostly these have been grey reef sharks (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos) that have been interested in the ROV unit, circling in closer to look. On a couple of occasions, during ROV surveys in one of the Chagos atoll lagoons we found black-tip reef sharks (Carcharhinus melanopterus). What is clear from the ROV surveys is that sharks in Chagos are regularly visiting twilight reefs, further reinforcing the importance of these deeper reef habitats to larger mobile predatory species in the marine reserve.
Grey reef sharks (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos) were seen at 30m taking a keen interest in the ROV
Representatives from 83 countries gathered at the UN headquarters in New York last month to begin work towards an agreement to protect ocean biodiversity in the high seas. After two weeks of negotiations, the first meeting of the Preparatory Committee concluded on a very positive note. This meeting was the first of four two-week sessions which will be held before the end of 2017 and which it is hoped will lead to a formal intergovernmental treaty conference in 2018.
The Bertarelli Foundation supported the first meeting of the Preparatory Committee by hosting a reception for negotiators and members of civil society who have been promoting the idea of high seas protection for many years. Dona Bertarelli spoke to guests about her experiences as a sailor on the high seas and how the things she has seen have convinced her of the need to protect this important ecosystem.
Comprising approximately 75% of the ocean, the high seas provides ecosystem services that are critical to coastal areas, the planet as a whole and mankind. Whilst great strides have been taken in recent years to create marine reserves within countries territorial waters, if international protection targets are to be met, most scientists and conservationists now recognise that areas beyond national jurisdiction must also be protected.
At the conclusion of the Committee, Dona Bertarelli commented:
“I am very encouraged that after over 10 years of discussions, such positive steps are being taken to protect the high seas. There is still a very long way still to go, but I am heartened that the negotiators I met are so determined to deliver a robust treaty.”
The 2016 Deans’ Health and Life Sciences Challenge at Harvard’s iLab is nearing its final stages as the finalists for this year’s competition have been announced. From over 60 applicants, five student-led teams have been selected, one of which will be awarded the Bertarelli Prize on May 4th.
This year’s finalists are:
Antera produces an all-natural solution formulated to safely reduce the risk of peanut allergy development in infants.
Buoy creates a simple and safe way to understand your symptoms, answer questions about your illness, and get an assessment of possible causes.
Herald makes healthcare safer by offering clinicians real-time access to clinical data exactly when and how they want it.
Pykus Therapeutics develops a dissolvable intraocular device to make retinal surgery less painful and more successful.
Searna Technologies provides uniquely sensitive and affordable molecular diagnostics for the non-invasive detection of cancer.
The Bertarelli Foundation is delighted to support the iLab and the Deans’ Challenge; since its inception in 2014, over 100 nascent student-led teams have been mentored towards commercialising their business ideas in the health and life science sector.
The previous winners have already had a huge impact in improving human health around the world. Aldatu Biosciences, the 2014 winners, have developed a diagnostic test for HIV drug resistance which is being trialed in Botswana, a country with an historically very high prevalence of drug-resistance. And LuminOva, the 2015 winners, are commercialising a method of detecting the viability of human embryos to increase the probability of successful invitro-fertilisation.
For many years the Bertarelli Foundation has supported the creation of large-scale Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) as a means of protecting threatened biodiversity in the world’s ocean. In 2010 we assisted with the British Government’s plan to create the world’s largest MPA around the British Indian Ocean Territory, and since then have supported the ongoing enforcement of the reserve.
Monitoring and enforcing such huge areas of ocean in some of the remotest places on earth is very challenging, but recent technological advances have made the job easier; for that reason, when the opportunity arose to support an effort to protect the waters around the Pitcairn Islands in the Pacific Ocean, we were very keen to get involved.
In March 2015 the British Government proposed the creation of an MPA encompassing 834,334 km2 of ocean surrounding the four remote South Pacific islands, which are a British overseas Overseas Territory. It is home to over 1,200 species of fish, marine mammals, and seabirds – including some found nowhere else on the planet – as well as the world’s deepest and most well-developed known coral reef. Like many other oceanic islands, there are fears that the Pitcairn Islands are highly vulnerable to illegal fishing, an activity that robs $23 billion of fish from the global economy every year, and which has known links to human trafficking and terrorism.
The Bertarelli Foundation, working in partnership with the Pew Charitable Trusts, has provided for a trial of satellite monitoring and the testing of other technologies, over a single fishing season in the Islands’ EEZ. The trial will help inform the future monitoring and enforcement strategy and brings the declaration of the MPA one step closer. Foundation co-Chair Ernesto Bertarelli said:
“Since 2010, the Bertarelli Foundation has successfully partnered with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office on a number of initiatives to increase the protection of our ocean. I’m delighted that we’re helping to demonstrate a practical solution to make the enforcement of fishing regulations more cost-effective, and accessible by governments all around the world. As part of our commitment to this area of work, we are very excited to be bringing the most up-to-date technologies to the Pitcairn Islands in 2016.”
The University of Belize Environmental Research Institute held an inauguration ceremony for the Staff and Visitor Quarters on the grounds of the Calabash Caye Field Station, Turneffe Atoll, on November 30, 2015. Supported by the Bertarelli Foundation, this is an important step in the development of this facility for local and visiting scientists which is now able to accommodate over 40 researchers.
Attending the inauguration were University of Belize staff, members of the NGO community, and several diplomats including Ambassador Benjamin Ho of the Republic of China; Ambassador Carlos Moreno of the United States of America; and Ambassador Carlos Quesnel Meléndez of Mexico.
President of the University of Belize, Alan Slusher, in his welcome remarks congratulated the Environmental Research Institute team on their accomplishments, whilst Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Harrison Pilgrim, reaffirmed his commitment in supporting the work of the Institute. He also thanked the Bertarelli Foundation for their continued support in the Turneffe Atoll. The wife of the Belizean Prime Minister, Mrs Kim Simplis-Barrow assisted Harrison Pilgrim in the field station’s ribbon cutting ceremony.
At the Our Ocean Conference in Valparaíso, the Chilean President, Michelle Bachelet, announced that her Government is to create one of the world’s largest fully protected marine parks in the waters surrounding Easter Island.
At 631,368 square kilometers (243,630 square miles), the new marine park will be the third-largest fully protected area of ocean in the world. The indigenous community of Easter Island—or Rapa Nui, as the island, its indigenous people, and their language are known—proposed the park to safeguard the biodiversity of the island’s waters, which are home to 142 endemic species, 27 of which are threatened or endangered. The park also will help the Rapa Nui continue centuries-old subsistence fishing practices within an area that extends 50 nautical miles from the shoreline.
The Bertarelli Foundation, in collaboration with Pew’s Global Ocean Legacy program, has supported the Rapa Nui’s efforts to protect their ocean waters since 2012 and also made possible research that underpinned the case for the marine reserve. This included the largest scientific assessment ever completed of the island’s marine environment, an economic analysis of the impact of a marine park, education and training for the local population, the facilitation of cultural exchanges with other native Polynesian people, and assistance with monitoring for illegal fishing activities.
Dona Bertarelli, who gave an address at the conference, along with Senator John Kerry, Richard Branson and others, said:
This is an exciting breakthrough, and I’m very proud of the role the Foundation has been able to play in supporting the Rapa Nui’s campaign and bringing this about. Rebuilding ocean resilience through protected areas is a crucial contribution to wider ocean health, in addition to securing the unique habitats of Easter Island for future generations.
The second Our Ocean conference has just started in Valparaiso, Chile and will hopefully be the the venue for many important ocean-saving announcements. Like the first conference which was held last year in Washington DC, this conference will play host to world leaders, NGOs and philanthropists all with the commitment and vision to help secure a future for the ocean.
Dona Bertarelli will be speaking about her support for the Rapa Nui of Easter Island and their campaign to protect the waters around their home. The Bertarelli Foundation has been working with local communities and with the Pew Charitable Trusts to advance their desire to declare a no-take Marine Protected Area around the island – a declaration that would create the largest MPA in the world.
It is with much sadness, but also with pride for having had the privilege to know him, that the Bertarelli Foundation reports the passing of Professor Howard Jones, who, together with his wife Professor Georgeanna Jones, was a pioneer of IVF in the USA. Professor Jones was 104.
The Professors Jones were the founders of the prestigious Norfolk IVF programme, which gave birth to the first IVF baby in the US, Elizabeth Carr. Their programme flourished and, as well as its breakthroughs in reproductive medicine, crucially trained many specialists who went on to start their own, successful IVF programmes around the world. Their contribution to reproductive science and to families around the world cannot be underestimated.
Professor Jones was, for many years, a Board member of the Bertarelli Foundation during its focus on fertility and – a field he was an expert in – knowledge transfer. In 2002 he and his wife were awarded the Bertarelli Foundation Award in Reproductive Health, which was established in 2000 to “honour individuals or teams who, through their work or personal commitment, have raised awareness about the global problem of infertility, promoted greater patient access to treatment, broken new ground in scientific research or medical treatment, or made extraordinary contributions in other areas that support the goals of the Bertarelli Foundation.” He was much, much more than a worthy winner.
Professor Howard Jones was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1910. After his BA degree, he graduated from the prestigious John Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1935. He was a Professor Emeritus of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Eastern Virginia Medical School, and Chairman of the Board (honorary) of the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine. He also held the rank of Professor Emeritus at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where, between 1967 and 1976, he served as Professor of Gynaecology and Obstetrics.
Professor Howard Jones was a pioneer in the true sense of the word – visionary, brave and ethical.
Study funded by Bertarelli Foundation is a collaboration between Harvard Medical School, Boston Children’s Hospital and EPFL which takes a step toward precision medicine for genetic hearing loss
Using gene therapy, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School together with colleagues at the EPFL have restored hearing in mice with a genetic form of deafness. Their work, published online on July 8th by the journal Science Translational Medicine, could pave the way for gene therapy in people with hearing loss caused by genetic mutations.
They chose TMC1 because it is a common cause of genetic deafness, accounting for 4 to 8 percent of cases, and encodes a protein that plays a central role in hearing, helping convert sound into electrical signals that travel to the brain. Holt believes that different forms of genetic deafness may also be amenable to the same gene therapy strategy. Overall, severe to profound hearing loss in both ears affects 1 to 3 per 1,000 live births.
Ultimately, Holt hopes to partner with clinicians at Boston Children’s Department of Otolaryngology and elsewhere to start clinical trials of TMC1 gene therapy within 5 to 10 years:
“Our gene therapy protocol is not yet ready for clinical trials—we need to tweak it a bit more—but in the not-too-distant future we think it could be developed for therapeutic use in humans. I can envision patients with deafness having their genome sequenced and a tailored, precision medicine treatment injected into their ears to restore hearing – this is a great example of how the basic science can lead to clinical therapies.”
Ernesto Bertarelli, Co-Chair of the Bertarelli Foundation, commented:
“The implications of successful gene therapy are profound and we are delighted to be associated with this study program. These findings mark a defining moment in the way we understand, and can ultimately challenge, the burden of deafness in humans. The results are testament to the immense dedication of the research team and their commitment to bringing best-in-class science ever closer to real-world application.”
The culmination of the academic year at Harvard University’s iLab is the awarding of the Bertarelli Prize to the winner of the Dean’s Health and Life Sciences Challenge. This year it was the turn of LuminOva to walk away with the prestigious award and a cheque for $40,000.
LuminOva was formed to address the problem of infertility which affects 15 per cent. of couple around the world and the relatively low success rates of current IVF treatment. LuminOva’s technology is non-invasive diagnostic techniques which is able to assess eggs and embryos in terms of the quality and viability. LuminOva’s technology measures fluorescence signals and from that derives the metabolic state of embryos. This means that clinicians will then be able to select only the very best embryos for implantation. The result of this is not only increased success rates, but also a reduction in the number of multiple pregnancies, an often unwanted
Alexandra Dickson explained the origins of LuminOva and why they are so committed to making progress with their technology:
“What makes us so passionate at LuminOva is that we see a field where there hasn’t been much innovation taking place, things haven’t changed that much in the industry and we really feel that a simple technology like ours can really make a huge impact.”
LuminOva intends to use their prize to engage with regulatory attorneys to help the company develop their road-map to market. They hope that very soon they will be able to move their technology from the laboratory and into the clinic so they can begin impacting the lives of patients.
The 2015 Bertarelli Symposium on Translational Neuroscience and Neuroengineering was held today, Friday April 17th, at Campus Biotech, Geneva.
The Symposium brings together scientists from Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) to discuss the work that they undertake collaboratively as part of the transatlantic research programme of the same name. The aim of the Bertarelli Programme is to “bridge the existing gap between basic and translational neuroscience”. It does this by supporting basic and clinical research oriented towards translational opportunities, by creating stronger ties among scientists, engineers and clinicians, and by training the next generation of leaders in the field.
Opened by Professor John Donoghue, Director of the Wyss Center at Campus, the 2015 Symposium was structured around three major themes: rehabilitation and robotics; hearing; and vision. There was also a fascinating analysis of the dynamics of brain networks in children with autism, led by Proessor André van der Kouwe and Professory Dimitri Van De Ville.
The morning session’s focus on rehabilitation and robotics saw Professors Silvestro Micera and Robert Howe update the audience on the remarkable progress being made in terms of robotic hands. This progress is both in terms of their mechanics, their means of sensing the environment to which they respond, the control they can now give, and, crucially, the characterisation of sensation that, through the use of implant electrodes, is now possible.
In the first afternoon session, attention turned to the research being done into both the diagnosis and treatment of hearing loss, a medical need that it is both undeniable and, as the audience heard, drastically misunderstood in terms of its scale, both now and in the future. Work being done in this area by the HMS and EPFL teams includes optical techniques for diagnosis and therapy, auditory brainstem implants, and gene therapy in mouse models of human deafness.
Closing the Bertarelli Symposium was the session on vision, opened by Professor Diego Ghezzi who spoke about neuroengineering approaches to vision restoration. Professor Ghezzi was followed by Professors Matthias Lütolf, Michael Young and Yvan Arsenijevic whose work, incredible as it may seem, is focused on tissue engineering the macula. Finally, Professor Thomas Wolfensberger, gave his keynote lecture, Vision Without Light: From Wacky Experiments to Current Clinical Applications of Retinal Implants.
The guiding principle of the Bertarelli Programme is collaboration and the breaking down of borders between disciplines, academic institutions and countries. The Bertarelli Symposium is the defining expression of this principle, bringing together a community of scientists and engineers to share knowledge, to hear about the work being done and to learn about the exceptional progress being made towards outcomes that are truly transformative for people’s lives.
At the concluding event of the 2014 Dean’s Health & Life Science Challenge, Aldatu Biosciences was selected as the winner of the inaugural Bertarelli Prize – an impressive achievement for a young company with huge potential.
Aldatu Biosciences was founded at the iLab by David Raiser and Iain MacLeod to further their efforts to apply PANDAA (Pan-Degenerate Amplification and Adaptation) technology to the challenge of detecting drug resistant strains of HIV. PANDAA is a familiar technology to many in the scientific community but Aldatu Bioscience have applied it in a novel way to great effect.
Drug resistance is already a huge problem and Iain McLeod be believes the problem is only getting worse:
“Year on year, both transmitted and acquired resistance to HIV antiretroviral is increasing around the world. When a Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute study started in 2010, about 4 per cent. of women who were coming into antenatal clinics had resistance. Now it’s up to 10 per cent.”
Aldatu Biosciences are entering an exciting stage of their development and intend to use their prize to help further their existing relationships with health professionals in East Africa where there is urgent need for improved detection of drug resistance.
The Bertarelli Foundation is a keen supporter of entrepreneurs in the life science sector, and especially those that can make practical improvements to the health and well-being of large numbers of people. Aldatu Biosciences is an excellent example of a young company with big ideas and the drive and desire to make a difference.
