2024

Method for fabricating tissue-penetrating 3D microelectrodes directly on our planar microelectrode array chips by using high-resolution 3D printing and 2-photon polymerization developed by collaborators in Stanford.

Members of TEDD network visited Department BSSE and BEL including research presentations and laboratory tours. TEDD is Swiss competence center devoted to Tissue Engineering for Drug Development and Substance Testing.

Best presentation award (second place) for Manon Murdeu (EMPA St. Gallen and BEL) at 19th European Placenta Group (EPG) Conference 2024 in Hradec Kràlové, Czech Republic.

Alumni and coworkers of BEL and PEL (former group of Prof. H. Baltes) met for a day to talk about emerging topics in science.

Microsystems & Nanoengineering / Springer Nature Test of Time Award at MicroTAS 2024 in Montreal to A. Hierlemann for contributions to tracking neurons and axons by means of high-density microelectrode arrays.

European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) excellence award for Aayush Marishi for his poster presentation on NOS1AP overexpression impacting network-level electrophysiology of in-vitro neuronal networks.

BEL spinoff MaxWell Biosystems visited the Department BSSE and BEL group on the occasion of celebrating their 8th year of incorporation.

BEL contribution to paper on self-clocked microelectrode array, which digitizes bio-signals at the pixel level by encoding changes as asynchronous digital address-events when they exceed a certain threshold.  

Novel microfluidic platform for cultivation of transwell-based lung tissues provides the possibility to alternate between air–liquid interfaces for culturing and liquid–liquid interfaces for imaging. Platform enables tissue cultivation and analysis under standardized well plate conditions.

Best Poster Award (3rd place) at the Microphysiological Systems (MPS) World Summit for Martin Stano presenting a platform for in-vitro sonodynamic therapy testing.

Synchronized combination of atomic force microscopy, high-density microelectrode array, and fluorescence microscopy developed. System can mechanically characterize and stimulate individual neurons at picoNewton force sensitivity and nanometer precision while monitoring electrophysiological activity at sub-cellular spatial and millisecond temporal resolution.

New 2D human-derived cell-culture model developed and electrophysiologically characterized, which led to discovery of new protein, neuronal pentraxin 2 (NPTX2), playing an important role in neurodegenerative diseases amytrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal lobar dementia (FTLS).

Newly developed machine-learning-assisted platform DeePhys enables phenotypic electrophysiological screenings at the cellular and network level, identification of reliable features to classify healthy and mutant neuron lines, and comprehensive evaluation of pharmacological interventions.

Novel intestine-on-chip microfluidic system for in‑vitro recapitulation of intestinal barrier. System enables simultaneous multiparameter investigations of role of different immune cell types through high-resolution microscopy, analysis of cell surface markers, and chemo/cytokine profiling.