COVID-19 – collaboration is key for organ-on-chip approaches and rapid tests

The Heart-on-a-Chip network (TFF-ResOOC) and the International Network for Lab-on-a-Chip technologies hosted their 11th Joint Network Meeting as a virtual event on October 15th, 2020.

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COVID-19 has been on everyone’s mind since the beginning of the year and has had a major impact on our daily life. Organ-on-a-chip models for the lung and heart can help understand COVID-19 disease mechanisms and can be used for testing treatment approaches. Furthermore, highly sensitive and easy-to-use rapid COVID-19 tests are desperately needed for identifying infections, but also for patient stratification.

In order to discuss the latest developments in the field of COVID-19, Saxion University of Applied Sciences and the Network for Lab-on-a-Chip Technologies invited their partners to join the 11th Joint Network Meeting. The meeting was hosted in a web meeting format.

The conference agenda included presentations from influential researchers and highly innovative companies in the field of COVID-19 patient stratification biomarker research and point of care testing, such as Prof. Dr. Martin Bennink (Saxion University), Dr. Ronny Schmidt (Sciomics GmbH) and Dr. Christian Mathis-Ullrich (SuSoS AG, guest speaker).

After the presentations the attendees were cordially invited to contribute to different break-out sessions. One session was centered on the improvement of organ on chip models for COVID-19 and similar diseases. In the other session novel biomarkers for COVID-19 and point of care tests with innovative sensing modalities were discussed.

More: www.lab-on-a-chip.de/en

About the Network for Lab-on-a-Chip technologies

Lab-on-a-chip approaches (LoaC for short) comprise the combination and integration of several steps of state-of-the-art and also innovative laboratory analytics on a glass, silicon or plastic chip. The objective is to achieve a high degree of automation as well as the greatest possible parallelization of many analytical steps (keyword: High Content-Screening).

About the Heart-on-a-Chip network

Heart diseases are one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Advances have been made to use the Organ-on-a-Chip technology to mimic organs and its (patho)physiology. The NanoBio Research Group focuses on the heart and is developing a resealable Organ-on-a-Chip platform for drug screening. The main goal of this project is to set up a fully integrated device to culture and pace heart cells and electrically monitor the cellular activity and drug responses, which can serve as a platform to test efficacy of drugs and to study heart diseases, without the use of animal testing.  

This Saxion University of Applied Sciences project involves the collaboration of various Dutch and German industrial partners (SMEs) and leading academic research institutes.

Contact

Annika Vüllers

Network for Lab on a Chip Technologies
c/o innos GmbH
Am Goldgraben
37073 Göttingen

Phone: +49 551 49601-11
E-Mail: netzwerk@lab-on-a-chip.de 

Prof. Dr. Martin Bennink

Head of the NanoBio Research Group Saxion University of Applied Sciences
Faculty of Life Sciences, Engineering and Design
M.H. Tromplaan 28
P.O. Box 70.000
7500 KB ENSCHEDE, The Netherlands

Phone: +31 6 2322 0882
E-Mail: m.l.bennink@saxion.nl


Website: www.nanobiosaxion.nl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nanobiosaxion

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