News

November 2024

Cherry Biotech, a partner of the DeLIVERy consortium, was  successful with their application for an EIC Accelerator grant related to their “Multi-organ toxicity and efficacy test platform for Personalized medicine & Drug development”.
Also, Dr. Henning Ortkrass, member of the project team at Bielefeld University, was successful with his application for start-up funding to the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) from the state of North-Rhine Westfalia (Start-up Transfer.NRW). This grant will allow Dr. Ortkrass to assemble and coordinate a small team starting in April 2025 to commercialize the optical technology behind DeLIVERy.

September 2024

The coordinator of DeLIVERy, T. Huser, won the 2023 Jörg Schwarzbich Inventor Award of the University Society of Bielefeld University for his original record of invention related to “fiberSIM”. The prize was awarded during a ceremony on Sept. 17, 2024.

See the related press announcements here and here.

June 2024

On June 11, 2024, Dr. Zapotoczny (IFJ PAN), as well as Prof. Huser (Bielefeld University) gave a talk during the “Information Day and Practical Workshop on the use of the “Hop On Facility” tool organized by the Polish National Contact Point of the National Centre for Research and Development (DKPK NCBR), Poland.

March 2024

From March 18 – 21, 2024, the DeLIVERy consortium met in Sommarøya, Norway, about 1 1/2h Southwest of Tromsø for its second in-person meeting. This meeting coincided with the first meeting of the ImAge-D consortium, a MSCA Doctoral Network, coordinated by Prof. Peter McCourt.

More impressions from the meeting can be found in our Gallery.

May 2023

Our WIDERA Hop-On grant application with IFJ-PAN from Krakow, Poland, was successful. 

IFJ PAN (Krakow, Poland) joined the consortium as a new partner with a new Work Package (WP). The grant application was entitled: “Multiparametric sample imaging: nanomechanical contribution to long-term evaluation of polypharmacy in liver [DeLIVERY-HopOn]”. This new addition will further enhance the existing project. DeLIVERy will now be complemented with an original system for probing nanomechanical properties and label-free nanoimaging provided by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and Fluidic Force Microscopy (Fluid-FM).

Dr. Bartlomiej Zapotoczny from IFJ-PAN describes the role of his research group as:  “Our goal is to combine the structured illumination microscopy (SIM) technique provided by Prof. Thomas Huser from UNIBI with well-developed at IFJ PAN Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) to provide multiparametric and complementary information about the chemical and mechanical properties of investigated objects. When succeeded, our 4D AFM/SIM will be able to provide valuable information in the context of liver refenestration and defenestration processes in polypharmacy. In particular, we are interested in biomechanical profiling of liver cells and tissues to understand the role of mechanical alterations in the liver in developing pathology.”

April 24 – 25, 2023

The EIC Pathfinder Open project held it’s first in-person meeting where all participants, plus the newly joined partner IFJ-PAN from Poland came together to present their individual progress made on the project and to discuss the current status of the project, prepare for the upcoming first Technical Review meeting and to discuss future activities.

The in-person meeting was held at a hotel in Paris, France, near the premises of our partner Cherry Biotech.

More impressions from the meeting can be found here.

December 2022

The majority of the researchers who will be working on “DeLIVERy” have been hired. Regular monthly meetings (every last Wednesday afternoon of each month) have started. A WhatsApp channel was set up for the group. Documents are exchanged via a dedicated Microsoft Teams project. A Hop-On proposal to the EU’s WIDERA programme for widening countries was submitted with a partner from Poland.

June 2022

The project had its kick-off meeting with all six original partners. The kick-off meeting was held entirely via Zoom.

May 2022

The EIC Pathfinder Open project “DeLIVERy” started on May 1, 2022 with a total duration of 48 months. It brings together researchers from several European Universities and 2 European Companies with the shared goal to develop novel innovative imaging and microphysiological systems technologies. These technological advances will be integrated into a single platform to enable the study of the effects of pharmacology on patient samples. The main goals of this development are:

– to reduce the amount of research conducted on laboratory animals

– to develop a platform to directly assess the effects that the interactions of multiple different drugs have on the human liver

– to develop novel imaging technologies to determine and evaluate morphological markers for the effects of poly pharmacy on liver cells and tissues

– to develop novel microphysiological systems that will allow maintaining liver cells and tissues over extended periods of time based on the simultaneous monitoring of multiple physiological parameters