The Erfurt-based CiS Forschungsinstitut für Mikrosensorik will in future provide even more intensive support for the development of diagnostic point-of-care systems at the InfectoGnostics research campus in Jena. Having previously contributed its expertise to campus projects as an associated partner, CiS is now officially joining the InfectoGnostics public-private partnership.
Mobile and compact systems for infection diagnostics pose a great challenge for sensor technology: On the one hand, the microsensors should enable reliable and accurate measurements. On the other hand, the sensors must be manufactured as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible to enable even doctors’ practices to purchase such innovative diagnostic systems.
As an affiliated institute of the Ilmenau University of Technology, CiS forms a bridge between science and industry and thus pursues a concept that is just as transfer-oriented and interdisciplinary as InfectoGnostics: “We have a great deal of experience in ‘marrying’ technologies from a wide variety of disciplines and transferring results from basic research into hybrid system solutions for industry. The public-private partnership in the research campus is therefore the ideal environment for us,” explains CiS Managing Director Prof. Thomas Ortlepp.
In the field of biophotonics, the Erfurt institute has been working with the Leibniz Institute for Photonic Technologies (Leibniz-IPHT) – a long-standing InfectoGnostics partner – for some time. A current example is the “SMARTER-SI” project: an EU-funded innovation centre for faster application of scientific findings in industrial practice. Together with international partners, CiS and Leibniz-IPHT are developing a mobile laboratory for the detection of allergens and fungal toxins in this EU project. In the process, a wide variety of technologies will flow together as assemblies in a complex point-of-care system: Starting with microfluidics, through the design of microarrays and the reading of fluorescence signals, to the electronic connection to user interfaces.
In the research campus, CiS will continue these successful collaborations and expand them in new projects. In this way, the Erfurt institute would like to advance the development of sensor-based diagnostic methods at the campus and also support work on open platforms for molecular diagnostics that can be used by many partners.
