About RESPONSIVE BIOMEDICAL SYSTEMS LAB-Prof. Simone Schürle-Finke

The Responsive Biomedical Systems Lab develops diagnostic and therapeutic systems at the nano-and microscale with the aim to tackle a range of challenging problems in health care.

The research focus is twofold: The group develops tools to study disease mechanisms in vitro at the cellular level. We then use this knowledge to inform the design and fabrication of responsive nano-systems that help diagnose or treat diseases with minimal invasion. These systems react to locally present signals of the disease environment, such as characteristic pH levels or enzymatic activity. Further, these systems are engineered to respond to externally applied stimuli including heat, acoustic, mechanical, or electromagnetic signals, resulting in a diagnostic or therapeutic output.

For this purpose, strategies derived from chemical synthesis, synthetic biology, and nanofabrication techniques are applied. This interdisciplinary work is based on the convergence of several fields and integrates methods and ideas from chemists, physicists, computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians.