Three million euro for new methodology in personalised medicine

Dresden Innovation Centre B CUBE and Potsdam Innovation Centre innoFSPEC receive funding from the federal government

The Center for Molecular Bioengineering (B CUBE) of TU Dresden and the Center for innovative fiber optic spectroscopy and sensors (innoFSPEC) of the University of Potsdam, both are parts of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) centers for innovation competence (ZIK) initiative, will receive BMBF funding of approximately three million euros for the project „Optical Cell Diagnosis and Manipulation” (OptiZeD). Innovative methods for personalised medicine will be developed with the help of a novel, miniaturized multiparameter biosensor system (MBS).

"We want to be able to track cell responses to a stimulus in real time and down to the individual cell. If this succeeds, the OptiZeD MBS could be used as an analytical, diagnostic and therapeutic tool", says project leader Michael Schlierf, Professor of Molecular Biophysics at B CUBE at TU Dresden. “This will enable us to meet the challenges of personalised medical treatment”, is added by project leader Prof. Ilko Bald, Professor for Hybrid Nanostructures.

Fibre sensor technology will help in the diagnosis of diseases, while new materials and suitable methods are needed to deliver drugs to certain sites of disease tissue, in order to combat disease in a targeted and local manner. The fibre-optic detection of biomarkers represents a method for diagnosing diseases in vivo, meaning directly in the patient, in combination with localized treatment.

The two project partners complement each other perfectly with regard to their competences. Only through the interdisciplinary team consisting of Dr. Claudia Pacholski (Functional Nanomaterials), Prof. Ilko Bald (Hybrid Nanostructures), Prof. Yixin Zhang (Biomolecular Interactions), Prof. Stefan Diez (BioNanoTools) and Prof. Michael Schlierf (Molecular Biophysics), the therapeutic tools can be developed. The innoFSPEC has experience in the development of fibre optic methods and the B CUBE brings expertise in fluorescence technologies and biomaterials. Together, they can tackle the challenges of optical cell diagnosis and present tangible perspectives for personalized medicine.

B CUBE – Center for Molecular Bioengineering was founded as a Center for Innovation Competence within the initiative “Unternehmen Region” of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. It is part of the Center for Molecular and Cellular Bioengineering (CMCB). B CUBE research focuses on the investigation of living structures on a molecular level, translating the ensuing knowledge into innovative methods, materials and technologies.

innoFSPEC is a research and innovation centre pursuing multidisciplinary research in the field of optical fibre spectroscopy and sensing. The centre was created as a joint venture of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) and the Physical Chemistry group of the University of Potsdam (UP).

Further media inquiries:
Prof. Ilko Bald
Tel: +49 (0) 331 977 5238
Email: bald@uni-potsdam.de
Webpage: www.innofspec.de

Prof. Michael Schlierf
Tel: +49 (0) 351 463 43050
Email: michael.schlierf@tu-dresden.de
Webpage: www.tu-dresden.de/bcube

 

© Yixin Zhang

Vision of the MetaZIKs OptiZeD for the development of an integral multiparameter biosensor system (MBS) © Yixin Zhang