Researchers' Access to Proteins Secured
Following almost five years of successful collaboration within the national research infrastructure Protein Production Sweden (PPS), the Swedish Research Council has granted continued funding for the period 2027—2030. Planning is now underway to further develop support for researchers over the coming years.
The University of Gothenburg is one of the partners in the collaboration, together with Karolinska Institutet, Lund University, Umeå University, and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. In 2025, seven laboratories across the five partner universities provided protein production services to 200 research projects, and since its launch in 2022, PPS has produced approximately 900 different proteins. A key factor behind this success has been the close collaboration established through the PPS initiative.
“Regardless of which university researchers approach, we jointly take responsibility for ensuring they receive the highest possible quality for the specific protein they require. We do this by allocating projects among our laboratories based on where the best expertise and conditions are available. Having a single point of entry also makes it easier for researchers to access the full range of our national infrastructure,” says Malin Bäckström, PPS Director and Head of Mammalian Protein Expression, one of the infrastructures within Core Facilities.
A shared vision laid the foundation
Collaboration among the partner universities existed even before PPS was established, primarily in the form of a network. Following a joint application to the Swedish Research Council in 2021, funding was awarded for a five-year period. PPS was subsequently established as a national research infrastructure to provide high-quality protein production and purification services, primarily, though not exclusively, to researchers in Sweden. Today, nearly 40 percent of PPS users come from universities outside the PPS partnership.
A crucial resource for medical research
In medical research, understanding the functions of different proteins in the body is essential.
PPS employs a range of expression systems to enable the production of several types of proteins, including bacteria, yeast, insect cells, mammalian cells, plant cells, and cell-free protein synthesis systems. In addition to protein production itself, PPS provides support throughout the entire production process. This can include everything from consultation and project design to purification and final quality control.
Many researchers who use PPS services are active in biomedical research, but users also come from fields such as drug discovery, materials science, and ecology.
Access to research infrastructure is essential
One of the researchers who has used PPS expert support is Jaan-Olle Andressoo of Karolinska Institutet and the University of Helsinki. His research group works on GDNF/GFRα1 signaling and drug development, with the aim of identifying new ways to modulate neurotrophic signaling pathways in diseases affecting the dopamine system and neuronal function.
“The support provided by PPS has been absolutely critical for our GDNF/GFRα1 project. The recombinant proteins we require, particularly GDNF and GFRα1 produced in mammalian cells, are extremely expensive to purchase, and full-length GFRα1 is essentially unavailable,” says Jaan-Olle Andressoo.
Through PPS, the research group gained access to biologically relevant GFRα1 proteins, making it possible to conduct experiments that would otherwise have been unrealistic, including fragment-based screening, crystallization studies, NMR, and cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM).
This access is particularly important because the structure of full-length GFRα1 has not yet been resolved. PPS's work with both glycosylated and deglycosylated forms of GFRα1 may therefore provide a unique opportunity to understand how this target protein functions and how it can be targeted therapeutically.
“PPS has been a critical enabler of the entire structural biology and drug development component of our research. The collaboration has worked extremely well, and our project has advanced in ways that would scarcely have been possible using commercially available proteins,” says Jaan-Olle Andressoo.
Extended funding creates opportunities to address more demanding challenges
The Swedish Research Council's decision to renew funding for PPS for the period 2027—2030 is not only recognition of the collaboration's success. The continued investment will enable PPS to support more researchers and to develop methods for producing proteins that are particularly challenging to generate.
“One such area of development is membrane proteins, which are often key targets in drug discovery. We also aim to support researchers designing novel proteins with specific functions who need to screen large numbers of protein variants in parallel,” says Malin Bäckström.
