Projects
Fast Infrared Coherent Harmonic Microscopy KU Leuven
The emergence of innovative research avenues in biomedicine in the last decades (cell therapy, cancer immunotherapy, bio-nanotechnology) has led to many proof-of-principle demonstrations fostering the hope for new therapeutic strategies for diseases. However, the translation from a laboratory bench into clinical practice has often proven unproductive. One of the reasons for this failure in translation is in the absence of imaging instruments ...
The Pizza protein as a starting point for protein nanotubes and helical fibrils KU Leuven
Proteins can be considered as nature’s most diverse building blocks which are involved in the various essential processes that constitute life. However, in the field of synthetic biochemistry and bio-nanotechnology, DNA has been the most successful building block so far to create a variety of shapes and applications, such as diagnosis and drug delivery systems. The preference of DNA over protein building blocks arose due to the fact that the ...
Microreactors in a digital lab-on-a-chip. KU Leuven
Novel microfluidic technologies for forensic sample investigation KU Leuven
My research is situated within the context of forensic inquiries into sexual assault cases involving male perpetrators and female victims. A primary challenge in this domain revolves around the acquisition of high-quality material from crime scenes for perpetrator identification. Specifically, the focus of this investigation is on touch evidence samples, gathered from objects where DNA has been deposited through handling or wearing. However, ...
DNA-only nanosensor technology empowers ultrasensitive multiplexing at the point of care KU Leuven
Recent trends in (early-stage) disease diagnosis have been driven by an increasing interest in detecting very low disease biomarker concentrations within small sample volumes. The related technological challenge is to design and develop very sensitive and accurate diagnostic tools that can attain this goal. In this context, DNA has been studied extensively over the years as an alternative building block for traditionally used proteins with ...
The Pizza proteins as computationally designed building blocks for biochemical nanostructures. KU Leuven
Recently we have computationally designed self-assembling symmetrical protein building blocks named Pizza. Biophysical characterization has shown that the proteins are very tolerant to truncation, permutation and introduction of multiple mutations. In this project we will combine computational protein design with experimental biochemistry to further develop the Pizza proteins as building blocks for bionanotechnology. Recent preliminary ...