Prof. Dr. Simone Schürle-Finke
Area of Interest
Nanosystems Design for Diagnostics and Therapy
Prerequisites a student should comply with
The candidate should be interested in designing and fabricating systems at the nano- and microscale to improve diagnostic and/or therapeutic efficacy in diseases, specifically cancer and infectious diseases. Solid background in physics, mechanics and mathematics is required and the student should be highly motivated to engage in challenging health care problems.
Recommended master courses (Electives I+II of Learning Agreement of the Major)
227-0447-00 Image Analysis and Computer Vision
227-0946-00 Molecular Imaging - Basic Principles and Biomedical Applications
376-1392-00 Mechanobiology: Implications for Development, Regeneration and Tissue Engineering
376-1614-00 Principles in Tissue Engineering
376-1622-00 Practical Methods in Tissue Engineering
376-1712-00 Finite Element Analysis in Biomedical Engineering
376-1719-00 Statistics for Experimental Research
376-1974-00 Colloquium in Biomechanics
Research projects of the group
The Responsive Biomedical Systems Lab develops diagnostic and therapeutic systems at the nano-and microscale with the aim to improve the currents state of health care. The group develops tools to study disease mechanisms in vitro at the cellular level and the acquired knowledge is then used to inform the design and fabrication of responsive nanosystems that help to diagnose or treat diseases minimal invasively. These systems react either to locally present signals of the disease environment, such as characteristic redox potentials and pH levels, enzymatic activity or characteristic homeostatic conditions, or externally applied stimuli including heat, acoustic, mechanic or electromagnetic signals. These nanosystems will be actuated by these external or environmental input signals to create diagnostic or therapeutic output such as local, on demand release of drugs. For this purpose, strategies derived from chemical synthesis, synthetic biology and nanofabrication techniques will be applied. This interdisciplinary work is based on the convergence of several fields and integrates methods and ideas from chemists, physicists, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians.
Projects:
• Engineering tools to identify signaling pathways in disease environments
• Nanosensors for disease diagnostics
• Controlling responsive bacteria for cancer therapy