Bio particles may play an important role in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. In order to help the health industry to make use of their full potential, it is necessary, however, to establish a standard for their quality assessment based on detailed analyses. This is the goal the research team of the project BioCETA wants to achieve.

Bio particles have an impact on both the physical and the mental condition of all creatures: Some of them have a positive influence on the health and well-being, as they restore damaged tissue, for example. Others, on the contrary, are responsible for infections, neurodegeneration or severe diseases like cancer. What also makes them interesting for science is their ability to absorp drugs and to integrate them into the organism in a natural way.

Methods that are currently in use to investigate individual populations of bio particles do not enable researchers to analyze them specifically and in high-resolution, however. Thus, it is important to establish a standard for quality assessment – not only to promote the progress in bio technology, but also to improve the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. In the course of the FFG-project BioCETA, it is expected to develop and establish an innovative, multi-modal biophysical analysis method that serves this purpose. In order to reach this goal, this research group will focus on the properties of bio particles, meaning their size, shape and protein-composition, as well as on the transport and absorption of cells. Only by knowing these details it is possible to ensure that the biological function of bio particles, which is essential for the success of various industrial manufacturing processes, may be sustained, clean and repeatable.

The TIMed Center already has a basic laboratory infrastructure as well as pool of experts in this area. As this project has special requirements that have to be met, however, it is necessary to create new and expand existing resources and know-how in the field of high-speed atomic force microscopy, high- and superresolution fluorescence microscopy as well as in bioinformatics. The results and findings of this project are intended to be made accessible for the healthcare industrie. Based on them, new applications in the pharmacology, bio technology and material engineering sector should be developed and existing applications should be improved.