The young researcher will participate in the development of a new concept (uCellnNet) to accelerate the mechanistic detection of disease development, with which we want to divide the response of a complex native tissue with a branched network of interactions and molecular events between several types of cells into a network of pairs of individual cell types, among which we can observe individual modes of intercellular interactions. For high-throughput monitoring of only these in real-time, we will develop a device with cells populated on a glass chip with micron resolution. Finally, we will validate the proposed uCellnNet concept on the current hypothesis of the signaling pathway in the development of fibrosis or lung cancer, which includes three key cell types (lung epithelial cells, macrophages, and fibroblasts).
An example of time lapse live cell microscopy of an immune cell (blue) cleaning up nanoparticles (red) from tissue cells (green):
The young researcher will gain knowledge:
- about the operation and development of advanced microscopic methods for imaging living cells,
- about the development of algorithms for quantifying microscopic images in the programming languages Python and Mathematica,
- and from various disciplines that study living organisms, their structures, functions and interactions with the environment. Mainly from biophysics, biochemistry, microbiology, physical chemistry, and mathematics.
The research work of the young researcher will be related to work in:
- Program group: Experimental biophysics of complex systems, Biophysics Laboratory, Department of Solid State Physics (F5), Jožef Stefan Institute;
- Development group of the company Infinite, development of bio-medical technologies d.o.o.
and involved in an applied research project entitled Development of a concept for mechanistic prediction of fibrosis and activation of blood coagulation caused by inhaled materials
The research field of the young researcher will be oriented towards scientific research and applied biophysics. In the research problem, the study of cell interactions (cell pairs) in limited chip geometries, which are about 100 times smaller than microfluidic devices, will be crucial. For research, he will use different cell pairs (e.g. lung pair: epithelial cells and macrophages) and microscopies used in the Laboratory of Biophysics (LBF) and the company Infinite d.o.o. Research will occur in collaboration with both groups (LBF and Infinite). In addition to the experimental work, I will also develop theoretical predictive methods that could be used to predict the onset of long-term health complications.