Sponsor: Czech Science Foundation
Principal investigator: Prof. Jiří Homola, Ph.D., DSc.
From: 2020-01-01
To: 2024-12-31
Understanding how life works on the cellular and molecular level is a major challenge for modern science with potential significant implications for the development of new drugs and diagnostic and treatment modalities. Therefore, the development of methods that will enable investigation of cellular processes presents an important research goal. The aim of the project is to develop a new generation of label-free biophotonic tools that will enable investigation of cellular processes, especially cell secretion and interactions of cells with biomolecules, with an unprecedented spatio-temporal resolution. These new tools will combine advances in photonic and plasmonic nanostructures, plasmonic imaging and microscopy, and micro/nano-fluidics. Although the tools that will be developed in the project can be applied to a broad range of cellular processes, in this project, we plan to use them to investigate cellular processes related to a group of serious onco-hematological diseases – myelodysplastic syndromes and acute myeloid leukemia.