Description
Are you an enthusiastic master`s student with an inquisitive mind for Chemistry and Chemical Biology, keen to develop diagnostic tools for biomedical applications? Here is an opportunity to join a multidisciplinary team, aiding in the design of novel, responsive probes for ultrasound detection of disease associated biomarkers. Gas-filled microbubbles are commonly employed as US contrast agents, as they effectively scatter ultrasound. A new kind of microbubbles has been designed at the Responsive Biomedical Systems Laboratory at ETH to detect the activity of proteases, a class of enzymes that provide insight into the state and progression of many diseases. The shell of these microbubbles is modified by adding crosslinks that can be cleaved by specific proteases, thus changing the stiffness of the microbubble. A specially designed ultrasound setup can detect these changes.
Your goal:
Your goal is to help in the synthesis of modified Lipids and their incorporation into microbubbles. Further you will be involved in the design of protease specific peptide linkers including their investigation in biochemical assays.
General:
Master or Semester project in the field of organic chemistry, chemical biology and material sciences.
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.
