Microbial communities have been identified as promising key-players for the biodegradation of pharmaceutical micropollutants such as Ibuprofen or Acetaminophen, which are continuously released into various environmental compartments, where they can persist. By using a combinatorial approach of bioinformatics (e.g. amplicon-seq, metagenomics), microbial cultivation and analytics, we are able to identify…

Andrea BiederCell-based in vitro pharmacological assays are routinely used to identify new drug candidates and test drug safety. However, the standard models have limits regarding their physiological relevance. One powerful new tool is the use of organoids – stem-cell derived self-organizing cell assemblies, that mimic closely the physiology of…

The pig is an ideal model for the human digestive tract. Humans and pigs’ guts share anatomical and physiological similarities as well as microbial functionality. Pig feces samples are commonly used as proxy of microbial activity in the colon, while majority of fermentation processes occur in the cecum. In this…

The use of many anticancer drugs is problematic due to severe adverse effects. While the recent clinical launch of several kinase inhibitors led to tremendous progress, these targeted agents tend to be of non-specific nature within the kinase target class. A future strategy will be the development of nanocarrier-based systems…

Early and accurate disease diagnosis is crucial for stopping disease progression and identifying appropriate treatments, but precise diagnosis of autoimmune disease is notoriously challenging due to the non-specific symptoms: it can take 4 to 5 years and multiple visits to various physicians. However, an early and precise disease diagnosis is…

Host cell proteins (HCPs) are one of the major process-related impurities of therapeutic protein production based on biological systems such as Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells. For clinical application of biopharmaceuticals, the control of HCP is crucial for product stability, product quality and patient safety. This project aims to focus…

Model-based signal processing approaches often form the missing link between raw sensor data and sophisticated machine learning methods. To provide state-of-the-art algorithms in this area, FHNW/HLS recently launched the open source project lmlib.ch. In this presentation we will give a short insight into the project with some…