Jan. 17, 2012

Multimodal Nonlinear Microscopy: Histopathology of Brain Tumors

Biophotonics provides - amongst others - "all-optical" technology for clinical diagnostics. Here we focus on the description of a novel biophotonic tool to assist in the diagnosis and localization of brain tumors. Currently, staining microscopy is the gold standard used in histopathology to determine tumor properties, but it is virtually impossible to apply this technique in vivo. moreJul. 26, 2010

EATRIS Infrastructure Accelerates Translation

Efficient translation of research discoveries into clinical application is essential to improve human health and maintain Europe's competitiveness in biomedical research and in health industry. A major bottleneck is the lack and the fragmented nature of research infrastructure and know-how, leading to unacceptable delays or preventing of the development of new innovative medicines. The aim of EATRIS, European Advanced Translational Research InfraStructure in Medicine, is to fill this gap by developing a pan-European research infrastructure.
moreJul. 26, 2010

High Content Image Cytometry

The human eye is a powerful and sensitive instrument which excels in pattern recognition, by using mental templates to identify and categorize objects. Unfortunately, its exact strength may also be its weakness, for it implies a certain subjectivity to the interpretation of images. Furthermore, our distinctive power and vocabulary for describing objects in a quantitative manner are limited. moreJul. 26, 2010

Quantum Dots DNA Nanosensors

Semiconductor quantum dots are light-emitting nanocrystals (2-10 nm) that straddle the border between condensed matter and atomic physics. In a quantum dot, all three spatial dimensions of the crystal are limited to less than the exciton radius of the material such that discrete energy levels arise due to quantum confinement effects and the spacing of which can be controlled by manipulation of crystal size. moreJul. 26, 2010

One Drug Target for Several Diseases?

TCTP is a highly conserved protein that is expressed ubiquitary in eukaryotic organisms. Based on the structure of Schizosachharomyces pombe - TCTP was assigned to small family of chaperones. TCTP is implicated in cell cycle progression, malignant transformation and in the response of cells to various stress conditions and apoptosis. Upregulation was shown in different cancer tissues and in addition, an extracellular, histamine releasing function has been discovered for TCTP.

History
moreJul. 26, 2010

Antibody Therapeutics

Currently more than 20 recombinant IgG antibody therapeutics are licensed, for treatment of a variety of diseases. Additionally, it is estimated that ~ 30% of new drugs likely to be licensed during the next decade will be based on antibody products. Protein engineering has been employed to "tailor" Mabs to activate selected pathways of action (effector mechanisms) considered to optimize clinical outcomes whilst minimizing their potential to be immunogenic. moreJul. 23, 2010

Fostering MALDI Imaging MS for Clinical Investigations

FFPE Stored Samples

Tissues coming from surgery have been long collected and stored under formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) form. Nowadays, the existence of this huge and easily accessible library of clinically relevant samples, leads scientist to ask a big question: is it possible to turn out this practically unused material in a convenient way to fit the needs of modern analytical techniques like MALDI-TOF-IMS?
moreJul. 23, 2010

Developing MALDI Imaging Technology for Cancer Profile

Normal and diseased tissues are complex mixtures of different cell populations. A better understanding of protein expression changes that occur during diseases needs sensitive and specific technologies for each of these cell types. Mass spectrometry based tissue imaging (MALDI-MSI) is a newly developed technique, allowing the visualization of proteins, peptides, lipids and small molecules directly on thin sections cut from fresh frozen or fixed paraffin embedded tissues. more