Associate Professor Rodolphe Marie and Associate Professor Johan Ulrik Lind have each been awarded a NERD grant that will ensure they can develop their creative and original research ideas, and provide new knowledge within the natural and technical sciences.
Project title: Next-generation molecular profiling of soft-matter nanoparticles by nanofluidics and single molecule imaging
Principal Investigator: Associate Professor Rodolphe Marie
Funding: 9.4 MDKK
It is well known that early and precise cancer diagnostics is significant in terms of the success of the subsequent treatment.
In our body fluids, we have soft-matter nanoparticles, which are also called exosomes. They are shed by all cells in the body including cancer cells. All exosomes carry a unique molecular signature from their cell of origin. Cancer biomarkers can be detected by reading the unique molecular code that the soft-matter nanoparticles carry. However, currently it is only possible to obtain information about this signature through cumbersome methods and instrumentation.
In the present project, a quantitative method and corresponding instrumentation is developed to analyse the soft-matter nanoparticles in a liquid biopsy. The goal is to enable early diagnostics of cancer. Furthermore, it could also be used for monitoring cancer treatment.
"We hope we can contribute to improved cancer therapy with this new exosome analysis tool and I can’t wait to start working on this project! It combines the best that has come out of my group in the past few years," Associate Professor Rodolphe Marie enthuses.
Project title: WATER-PAINT - Water-based 3D Printing of Actuator- and Sensor-Instrumented Tissues
Principal Investigator: Associate Professor Johan Ulrik Lind
Funding: 12.4 MDKK
Living tissue is three-dimensional, soft, and mechanically active, while traditional electrical sensors and actuators are rigid and planar. This fundamental mismatch is the root cause behind severe complications for implanted biomedical devices such as fibrosis and blood cloth induced by pacemakers, defibrillators and artificial valves.
The aim of this project is to enable seamless integration of living human tissue with sensors and actuators, by establishing a new water-based, bio-hybrid, 3D printing methodology.
Beyond paving the way for a new generation of biocompatible, personalized, implantable biomedical devices, the technology will have immediate implications for laboratory models of the human body. Here, embedded sensors can provide high-throughput information about how the models develop and respond to external stimuli.
“If we are successful, this project could redefine how we design and build devices at the interphase between living and synthetic. This way, it may pave the way for instrumented human tissue models that better predict the efficacy and side effects of drug candidates, as well as truly personalized implantable devices and human-machine interphases,” Associate Professor Johan Ulrik Lind finishes.
Photo caption: Rodolphe Marie and Johan Ulrik Lind. (Photo by Jesper Scheel)