ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

Liquid handling is an integral part of biological and medical assays. For many applications the method of choice is manual pipetting, which has significant limitations. Chiefly, it is user-time intensive and prone to sample handling issues (poor time accuracy and pipetting errors). While liquid handling robots do exist, they are expensive instruments, shared by many users and targeted for high-throughput applications. This leaves, in practice, most research and diagnostics without an automated solution. Here, we present an innovative solution to this problem: a compact and mobile automated liquid handling (AutoLiqHand) device for the individual user. This platform will enable to automate biomedical experiments and diagnostic routines which are currently done by hand. Moreover, its unique design enables it to run in a much larger range of biomedical settings than currently offered by existing solutions, and at the fraction of the cost. This platform was developed as part of the ERC-funded project SelfOrg and is routinely used in our lab for a variety of specialized and standard routines (e.g. drug treatment and immunostaining). The AutoLiqHand system mimics the main advantages of manual pipetting, namely simplicity and versatility, through a unique design of a fully integrated and microfluidic-based platform. In addition, when interfaced with well-established biomedical equipment such as ELISA readers or PCR machines, our platform can form a fully automated lab at significantly lower costs than commercially available devices. Thus, it has the potential to become a standard tool for researchers both in basic and early pharmaceutical/clinical research as well as for clinicians in point-of-care diagnostics. The aim of this Proof-of-Concept proposal is to adapt the AutoLiqHand platform to market needs and optimize it for production in order to make it available to the market.

149 750 €

Start date: 2017-01-01, End date: 2018-06-30

Non-invasive Brain Machine Interfaces (BMI) bring great promise for neuro-rehabilitation and neuro-prosthesis, as well as for brain control of everyday devices and performance of simple tasks. Over the last 15 years the interest in BMIs has grown substantially, and a variety of interfaces have been developed. The field has been growing dramatically, and market studies reveal an estimated market size of $1.46 billion by 2020. However, non-invasive BMIs have failed to reach the impressive control seen by BMIs implanted in the brain. To date, they require considerable training to reach a moderate level of control, they are susceptible to noise and interference, do not generalize between people and devices, and performance does not show long-term consolidation. Results from our ERC-funded work uncovered a new paradigm that dramatically improves these issues. We propose to develop a prototype for a novel, standalone, non-invasive, noise-resistant BMI, based on an unexplored BMI learning paradigm. In this POC we will 1) refine the brain signal interface (decoder) to be automatically customizable to each individual and produces faster training, 2) implement our BMI technology into a portable hardware-based system, and 3) develop a virtual reality/gaming training platform that will increase learning, performance and consolidation of BMI control. In addition to these technical aims, we propose to explore commercial opportunities and societal benefits, in particular in the health sector. We will conduct market analysis and develop a business case for this product, while expanding industry contacts for production and commercialization. The work proposed in this PoC grant will permit, for the first time to our knowledge, the development of a portable, stand-alone, noise-resistant, and easy to learn BMI, applicable across a wide set of devices, which will bring a significant social impact in health, entertainment and other applications.

149 625 €

Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2018-02-28

Personalized medicine aspires to provide optimal therapy in real-time during patient treatment, however current methodology falls short to deliver this in a robust manner. With this in mind, we invented a method for the screening of thousands of drug responses in small samples of an individual’s peripheral blood by automated microscopy and single-cell image analysis. We termed this method pharmacoscopy. In the course of carrying out the i-FIVE ERC grant project plan, we began screening for novel anti-viral or immune modulating drugs. In the quest to increase the physiological relevance of our screening settings, we investigated the possibility of using peripheral blood cells or bone marrow from individuals. We have thus far been able to show that the approach allows for the screening of anti-inflammatory properties of compounds, and to score for distinct sub-population specific cell cytotoxicity profiles of clinical anti-neoplastic agents through the tracking of fluorescent antibodies and probes. Moreover, we have been able to show that the approach empowers the therapeutic decision-making capability of hema-oncologists in a concrete clinical setting using primary myelofibrosis and lymphoma as test diseases. With funding from this grant, we intend to obtain further clinical data through retrospective trials, and incorporate the results into an information package attractive enough to draw the attention of potential investors. We have secured the intellectual property rights and have assembled the know-how required to enable commercialization efforts. With the unique image-based single cell analysis of human liquid tissues, we believe that chemos has the potential to develop into a service that enables and advances personalized medicine and drug discovery for a broad spectrum of hematological disorders.

146 668 €

Start date: 2016-10-01, End date: 2017-09-30

CONQUEST aims to commercialise a first-of-its-kind platform technology for imaging a biological effect – i.e. the EPR effect – that is predictive for a cancer patient's response to tumor-targeted nanomedicine (NM) therapy. CONQUEST thereby addresses a key issue in the (nano)pharmaceutical industry; as currently large proportions of cancer patients do not respond to NM, while others show major improvements in terms of response rates, survival times and quality of life. This trend impairs the outcome of clinical studies and results in many patients receiving treatments that are not effective to them. It would therefore be highly desirable to stratify responders from non-responders prior to study entry or treatment. CONQUEST stands at the basis of introducing a solution to this problem in the pharmaceutical industry. Prof. Lammers and colleagues, as part of ERC-funded research, have developed a powerful imaging approach that allows to construct an EPR profile of each individual tumour - by the administration and non-invasive imaging of contrast agent-labelled nanocarriers (drug-loaded or empty) that accumulate in tumours through EPR. The general idea is that patients with a low degree of EPR, and therefore unlikely to respond to such treatments, can be excluded from NM treatment and referred to alternative established or experimental interventions. Vice versa, patients with a high level of EPR can likely be treated relatively efficiently. Recognising the commercial potential of this technology, CONQUEST aims to tailor the technique and protocol for application in humans, by tuning the method for imaging with PET-MRI. A successful demonstration of PET-MRI-based EPR imaging will trigger large interest of the pharmaceutical and diagnostics industry, to invest in further clinical (co-) development.

145 312 €

Start date: 2016-01-01, End date: 2017-06-30