The focus of the subproject is the exploration of diagnostic point-of-care solutions for the identification of pathogens of opportunistic infections through moulds or herpes viruses, for example. In the case of a primary illness, these microorganisms can cause life-threatening infections.
In the subproject, innovative concepts will be developed that enable self-contained circulation through the implementation of microfluidic and particle-based functional elements and thus prevent contamination and minimise the risk of infection for the user. This will allow for a quick, safe and specific diagnosis of the pathogen directly from minimally invasive patient-derived material with a time investment of only a few hours.
The sub-project is divided into two main areas of research:
- Research into a platform that allows reliable, fast and parallelised pathogen analysis while taking into account the integration of new features.
- Researching innovative spectroscopic methods for direct detection of pathogens.
Method validation is carried out with samples from the HKI subproject and with patient material from the biobank of the University Hospital Jena. In addition, the close cooperation and given synergies between academic and industrial partners in the InfectoGnostics Research Campus enable rapid assessment and evaluation of the researched platform technologies with respect to their applicability.
This research project is part of the campus project "Pneumonia in Immunosuppression"
Project duration
01.02.2015 – 31.01.2020
Project coordination
Institute of Physical Chemistry, Friedrich Schiller University Jena