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Multiple positions at postdoctoral, doctoral, and pre-doctoral level are now open. Go to Openings for more info. We look forward to your applications!

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As of June 1, Dr. Winkler started as an Associate Professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Retaining also a part-time affiliation as Group Leader at TU Braunschweig, this means that µ4Life is now a truly international research group.

Open positions at both sites will be announced over the coming months across experience levels, stay tuned.

Along with Dr. Rogal from Karolinska Institute, Dr. Winkler gave a webinar on “How to get started with Organ-on-Chip? – A Guide for Beginners” as part of a series hosted by the 3R Network BW. You can watch the video here.

(story courtesy of TU Braunschweig Press Office)

The European Research Council (ERC) has announced the recipients of its prestigious Starting Grants. Among them is a researcher from the Technical University of Braunschweig: Dr. Thomas Winkler will receive €1.5 million for his research on modular organ-on-chip technology to better understand neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia.

The ERC grants support top young researchers across Europe – from medicine and physics to social sciences and humanities. A total of 2,696 applications were submitted this year, of which 400 were successful. One of the funded researchers is Dr Thomas Winkler from the Institute of Microtechnology at the TU Braunschweig. His research aims to use microsystems tools to solve challenges in the life sciences – from organs to labs-on-chips.
In the project funded by the ERC Starting Grant, Dr Winkler and his team are working on a modular organ-on-chip technology to better understand the role of cellular interactions between blood vessels and the nervous system in schizophrenia.

“I am delighted that the ERC has decided to invest in these pioneering lines of research,” says Dr Thomas Winkler. “Feedback control of in vitro cell culture models made possible by microtechnology is an important step towards more reproducible biological research that is relevant to humans and less dependent on animal models. And our first planned application in the field of otherwise often neglected neuropsychiatric disorders has the potential to decipher the role of oxidative stress in schizophrenia and thereby also provide new therapeutic impulses. Overall, the Starting Grant is a great opportunity for me and my team to spend the next five years doing research at the interface of technology and biology, which has always been very exciting for me.”

Dr. Winkler’s research group is part of the Centre for Pharmaceutical Process Engineering (PVZ) at TU Braunschweig. Here, experts from the fields of pharmacy, process engineering and microtechnology work together on a long-term basis – in a model that is unique in Germany to date – to develop cost-effective, effective and personalized medicines based on new technologies and methods.

About the ERC Starting Grants
The grants are part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme and are invested in scientific projects across all research disciplines. They are designed to help early-stage researchers start their own projects, build teams and pursue their best ideas. Researchers of all nationalities with two to seven years of experience since obtaining their doctorate, a promising scientific track record and an outstanding research proposal are eligible to apply.

About the ERC
Established by the European Union in 2007, the ERC is the main European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It supports creative researchers of all nationalities and ages carrying out projects throughout Europe. The ERC offers four main funding schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With the additional programme of Proof of Concept Grants, the ERC helps its grantees to bridge the gap between their frontier research and the early stages of commercialisation.

The article “Astrocyte 3D culture and bioprinting using peptide functionalized hyaluronan hydrogels” was published in Advanced Healthcare Materials today.

3D neuronal cell culture places stringent requirements on the materials. Here we present a hydrogel based on hyaluronan (abundant in the brain), modified with small adhesion-cue peptides, and examine its ability to support astrocytic cultures. With a cyclic RGD peptide modification in particular, primary astrocytes interact well with the hydrogel in 3D culture. We moreover demonstrate 3D printing as a first step towards more advanced tissue constructs.

The article “Metabolic Assessment of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells-Derived Astrocytes and Fetal Primary Astrocytes: Lactate and Glucose Turnover” was published in Biosensors today.

Astrocytes play an important role in brain metabolism. In this paper, we characterize the glucose uptake and lactate secretion of these cells, comparing primary astrocytes with stem cell-derived astrocytes. We find that the latter show similar metabolic ratios as the primary cells, even if overall rates are lower. Our study pioneered the use of an easy-to-use, off-the-shelf flow-through biosensor for these metabolic assessments, demonstrating the feasibility of future integration into microfluidic devices for continuous monitoring.

The article “Bioorthogonally Cross-Linked Hyaluronan–Laminin Hydrogels for 3D Neuronal Cell Culture and Biofabrication” was published in Advanced Healthcare Materials today.

3D neuronal cell culture places stringent requirements on the materials. Here we present a hydrogel based on hyaluronan (abundant in the brain), crosslinked with laminin (important for neuronal adhesion and development). The gel supports spontaneous 3D differentiation of neural stem cells. It also proves suitable for protecting these cells during syringe extrusion, a key requirement for bioprinting as well as for therapeutic injection.