Frans Kokojka is a doctoral researcher in the Biosensors lab, at the Department of Biotechnology Engineering, Ben-Gurion University, Israel. He was awarded the STSM and was hosted by Dr. Ana R. Diaz-Marrero at Instituto de Productos Naturales y Agrobiología, CSIC, Spain, where he investigated the interaction of marine biotoxins and bioactive compounds with phagocytes.
During this time, Frans got familiar with the techniques used to isolate and purify small molecules from marine organisms. Furthermore, he had the opportunity to test the small molecules for their ROS generation-inducing activity in a phagocyte-based assay.
This STSM enabled the starting of a long-term collaboration, to joint the expertise and resources of the partners with the aim of better understanding the mechanisms of interaction between toxins/bioactive compounds with the immune system, introducing a bioassay and thus contributing to marine biotechnology and the medical field.
Figure 1. Preparations of toxin and bioactive compound solutions.
Figure 2. Isolation of phagocytes. Figure 3. Preparation of plates and measurement of luminescent curves in the luminometer.
