“We share enormous potentials on the Campus Schällemätteli”
The Biozentrum just moved into its new building and, a stone’s throw away, the ETH Zurich’s Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE) is finalising its new research and teaching facility, next door to the University Children’s Hospital Basel and the University Hospital Basel. Daniel Müller, Head of the D-BSSE, is looking forward to collaborating with the new neighbours on the Schällemätteli campus.
What is your vision for the Schällemätteli Campus?
We will be an extremely exciting mixture of different institutions on one campus, including the Biozentrum, Pharmazentrum, and Department of Biomedicine (DBM) of the University of Basel, the two University Hospitals, and the D-BSSE of the ETH Zurich. The complementarity of these institutions is unique and provides a fantastic potential for combining fundamental research, applied research and medicine to address existing and future problems of our society. It is on us to build on our synergies and shape the Schällemätteli Campus to be a unique Life Science hub in Switzerland. To achieve this, I think we should work towards building a common campus atmosphere. For example, we could start a joint lecture series at which we address certain scientific and medical topics from different perspectives. However, we should also foster exchanges between the institutions at all levels.
What was the motivation of ETH Zurich to establish a new department located in Basel?
Fourteen years ago, the D-BSSE was established here in Basel to link fundamental research with Life Science industries and medical applications. D-BSSE with its profile in applied research in biosystems science and engineering – and the many spin-offs that originated from the department – represents a unique profile and missing link in Basel. We have the mission to establish collaborations between academics, medicine and industry, of which two are located on the Schällemätteli Campus – and with a strong profile we can attract the surrounding industry as a third partner to join us.
How do you envision the exchanges with other partners on Schällemätteli?
I would be happy to start by identifying common interests already before we move to the Schällemätteli Campus. My dream is that the PhD students of all institutions build a community instead of acting as individual entities. The same should happen with the postdocs and professors but also with the technical and administrative staff members, so that they can all build communities on the campus, talk to each other, learn from each other, and work with each other. Each of the Schällemätteli institutions brings along very different and complementary expertise and perspectives.
Why is it so essential to build a campus community?
For example, scientists at the Biozentrum come from basic research, many of us at the D-BSSE come from applied research, and members of the University Hospitals come from medicine and focus on patient applications. We all speak different scientific languages; at the same time, we share enormous potentials and synergies to shape the future in a unique way. Finally, the building of communities will help us bridge the language and knowledge boarders and to address major scientific and medical challenges.
In what way does the architecture of the new home for D-BSSE support this exchange?
Of course, the architecture of our new ETH-building is open to the public. On the ground floor of our new building a pedestrian “bridge” arches to the neighbouring campus partners. The public and our colleagues from the Schällemätteli Campus are invited to walk in, to watch us working, to enjoy a coffee in our cafeteria at the pedestrian bridge and to enter into a dialogue with D-BSSE members. In summary, at the Schällemätteli, there will be four attractive coffee bars to meet at. We hope that the diverse members of the different institutions will mingle and decide in the morning, on the spot, to have a joint coffee, meet some colleagues and discuss collaborative projects.
Which additional expertise can institutions on the Schällemätteli Campus contribute to those at the D-BSSE?
There are some facilities that our Schällemätteli partners have and we do not have in-house, for example, the Biozentrum has an electron microscopy facility. We already share the animal facility with the University of Basel. On the other hand, we will provide a large cleanroom facility and a good manufacturing practice (GMP) facility. In 2008, we also established a joint genomics facility together with the University of Basel, which is located in our building. In the future, for larger events we will need to use the lecture rooms at the Biozentrum, which have greater capacities. Since we will bridge the University of Basel campus and the University Hospital campus we will also work more closely with our partners from medicine to, for example, develop new theoretical data science approaches or applied biosystems engineering approaches that lead to new solutions in therapeutics or translational medicine.
Since many years you work together with Sebastian Hiller at the Biozentrum. Can you tell us more: What is this project about?
Sebastian and I established our collaboration shortly after we both came to Basel in 2010. Since then, with great fun and enthusiasm, we have been working on different topics. From the early days we have been focussing our work on the biogenesis of membrane proteins and how this extremely important class of proteins can destabilise in diseases. Most recently, we worked on gasdermins. These are the main effector proteins for pyroptosis, a special form of cell death, which is associated with inflammatory diseases. In our research we show how gasdermins insert into the cell membrane and how this inflammatory process can be prevented. Interestingly, it was found that gasdermins play key roles in COVID-19 associated diseases, such as inflammation of lungs. To give another example: we currently systematically investigate mechanisms by which some antibiotics target the integrity of cell membranes. The collaboration with Sebastian and his research group is highly stimulating and we are continuously learning from each other to expand our horizons.
How is the D-BSSE preparing to move to the Schällemätteli Campus?
Currently, we plan to move in 2022 into our new building. This process is planned in such a manner that we can continue working as soon as possible at our new location. However, we as a department also wanted to take this occasion to rethink our department in terms of mission, culture and strategic priority areas. For this we started the “D-BSSE 2030” initiative in which all members of the department enthusiastically participate, with the aim to prepare the department for the next ten years and to make a strong contribution to the Schällemätteli Campus and the Basel area.
Daniel Müller is Head of the Biophysics group and since February 2021, Head of the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering of the ETH Zurich.
A few groups at the Biozentrum and the D-BSSE have been collaborating for many years. Two very prominent examples are Nextstrain and the NCCR AntiResist.
Nextstrain is a platform for the analysis of the spread of viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 variants during the coronavirus pandemic, set up by Richard Neher. This platform builds on sequencing data provided by the Genomics Facility Basel, which is processed by Niko Beerenwinkel’s Computational Biology group and then analysed epidemiologically by the Computational Evolution group of Tanja Stadler (both D-BSSE).
The National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) AntiResist, a SNF-funded multi-institutional initiative targeting the antibiotic-resistance challenge, is another example of fruitful collaboration between the Biozentrum and D-BSSE. The NCCR is led by Christoph Dehio, Dirk Bumann and Urs Jenal. From D-BSSE, principal investigators Andreas Hierlemann (Bio Engineering Laboratory) and Petra Dittrich (Bioanalytics Group) contribute with engineering expertise and Karsten Borgwardt (Machine Learning and Computational Biology Lab) with expertise in bioinformatics and machine learning.
This interview was published by the external page Biozentrum, University of Basel, in the employee magazine Inhouse No. 37, January 2022.
Find information about Professor Daniel Müller and his research, and ETH Zurich's new building on the Schällemätteli-Campus in Basel.