LaserImplant
Laser-induced hierarchical micro-/nano-structures for controlled cell adhesion at implants
A large application area of medical implants are currently dental prostheses – a rapidly growing market in ageing societies. These implants consisting of titaniumi or a titanium alloy should provide good and fast osseo-integration into the jaw bone. Opposed to that demand, in other applications (for instance for bone screws and plates), the implants may have to be removed after some months or several years and shall, therefore, not be completely overgrown by the bodies’ cells. Hence, a one-step laser-based surface functionalization of implant materials for controlling the cell growth is strongly desired.
The goal of the EIC Pathfinder pilot project LaserImplant is the cooperation between academia, research centers, laser-processing device developers and implant producers for future development of smart medical implants addressing wide-spread patient’s needs in the fields of dental prostheses and screws and plates for bone regeneration. The project activities include to pave the pathway for commercialization of laser-functionalized implants, the exploration of industrial up-scaling strategies (including a demonstrator of implant functionalization machines to be conceived and built at the end of the project), and the dissemination and exploitation of the results.
The project consortium is strongly interdisciplinary combining renowned academic and industrial experts from the fields of medicine, surface chemistry, physics, materials sciences, laser-matter interaction, and laser processing. The joint project consortium forms an excellent base for fundamental and applied research in the field of medical surfaces.
Research Directors
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Juan AllegrettoI'm Juan Allegretto, originally from Argentina. I did my PhD focusing on the synthesis and characterization of Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) films, in the Soft Matter Laboratory, under the supervision of Dr. Omar Azzaroni and Dr. MatÃas Rafti. I also worked as a postdoc for 6 months in the same lab, integrating MOFs into solid-state nanochannels for microfluidic membranes with highly specific separation and ionic transport. I'm currently employed by DPU as Junior Researcher, being the Project lead of the ESPRIT project "Tailoring Plasmonics & MOFs: Synergy for Odorant sensing" from FWF, on which I'm working under the mentoring of Dr. Jakub Dostalek in the Biosensor Technologies group.
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Naoto Asai Ph. DNaoto Asai is a full-time Junior Researcher at the LiST (International Laboratory for Life Sciences and Technology) research group at the Danube Private University. His research focuses on the development of optical biosensors for the detection of biomarkers. He joined this group to take part in a project entitled Digital Plasmon Biosensor (DIPLAB). His core research interest is to improve biosensing performance through cutting-edge technologies utilizing material science, biotechnology, and computer science. He received a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Kansai University, a master's degree in Engineering, and a doctor degree's in Engineering from the Graduate School of Kansai University.
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Dr. Hannes DörflerDr Hannes Dörfler is a chemist by training and received his PhD from the Molecular Systems Biology Department at the University of Vienna. After a three-year postdoctoral phase at the company Boehringer Ingelheim in Germany where he was working on Omics-based biomarkers, he joined DPU as a staff scientist. Hannes Dörfler has expertise in biochemistry and pharmaceutical development, and also works with multivariate statistical analysis of big data towards pattern recognition and biological interpretation.
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Dr. Jakub DostalekOptical biosensor technologie for biomarker analysis Jakub Dostalek received his PhD in 2006 from the Charles University in Prague and worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Photonics and Electronics, Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS) until 2006. After his postdoctoral training and spending one year as a project leader at Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz in 2008, he moved to the Austrian Institute of Technology in Vienna in 2009, where he worked from 2015 as senior scientist until 2023. Since 2020, he serves as a lecturer at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna. In 2021, he assumed senior researcher position at the Institute of Physics, CAS, in Prague. From 2023 he is active in LiST at Donau Private University. His research interests concern combined aspects of nanophotonics and biomaterials research applied in optical sensors and biosensors, and light management in thin film optical devices. Near-field and guided wave optics, plasmonics, biointerfaces, amplification strategies in optical spectroscopy, biomolecular interaction analysis. Analytical technologies for rapid and sensitive detection of chemical and biological species relevant to medical diagnostics.
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Katharina Schmidt Ph. DKatharina is an ambitious PhD student with the aim to develop plasmonic biosensors to observe well-seperated single molecules for ultrasensitiv cancer biomarker detection at the Danube Private University in the LiST Laboratory under the supervision of Dr. Jakub Dostalek. She achieved her individual Master's degree in Nanobioscience at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, as well as her Bachelor in Food- and Biotechnology.