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Tuesday, 20 September 2016 16:00

Master Thesis Featured

  • Title: Master Thesis
  • Type: Full-Time
  • Company name: Jena University Hospital, Center for Sepsis Control and Care
  • Address: .
  • Zipcode: .
  • City: Jena
  • Country: Germany
  • Contact person: Dr. Alexander Mosig
  • Contact phone: +49 03641-9346418
  • Contact email: alexander.mosig[at]med.uni-jena.de
  • Description:


    Junior Research Group “in vitro sepsis research”, Center for Sepsis Control and Care

    Our research group has recently established microfluidically supported biochips for the culture of human organoid models to mimic functional aspects of the human vasculature, liver, gut and brain (1-4). The organoids are composed of essential human cell types of the respective organs and offer a promising approach for basic research on infection disease, inflammation and drug screening (3, 5-7). We cooperate with academic partners from basic and clinical research as wells as industrial partners from different areas such as material science, infection disease, immunology and others to further develop and test these organ models. Our goal is to establish biochip-based organ models as novel in vitro tools to reduce animal experimentation in biomedical research.

    We offer three positions for the preparation of a Master Thesis:

    1. Determination of the role of human monocytes subsets in damage and tissue repair during inflammation-related liver failure.
    Topics:
    - isolation of primary human monocyte subsets
    - modelling of liver damage and tissue repair in a liver-on-chip model
    - determination of cellular aspects in the regulation of the sinusoidal microenvironment during inflammatory-related liver dysfunction

    2. Establishment of a human blood-brain-barrier model comprising astrocytes, pericytes and neural spheroids for modelling cellular aspects of sepsis-associated encephalopathy.
    Topics:
    - optimization of culture protocols for neural spheroids cultures
    - establishment of a neuroinflammatory disease model
    - development of a novel blood-brain-barrier / brain organ-on-chip model

    3. Development of novel thermo-activated polymer gels for microfluidically supported biochips.
    Topics:
    - cellular toxicity assays
    - establishment of new cell culture protocols
    - development and characterization of biocompatible thermo-responsive hydrogels for organ-on-chip models (interdisciplinary cooperation with
    chemists and physicists

    For the experimental work we offer theoretical and practical introduction in various methods including:
    * flow cytometry
    * fluorescence microscopy
    * biochip-based dynamic cell culture
    * organ-on-chip assembly
    * basic methods of molecular biology and cell biology including real-time PCR, cytokine bead assays, cell isolation of primary cells from blood and cord, cell culture of immortalized and primary cells and other techniques

  • How to apply:


    Interested applicants should contact:
    Jena University Hospital
    Center for Sepsis Control and Care
    Dr. Alexander Mosig,
    Email: alexander.mosig[at]med.uni-jena.de,
    Phone +49 03641-9346418

    References
    1. Raasch M, Rennert K, Jahn T, Peters S, Henkel T, Huber O, Schulz I, et al. Microfluidically supported biochip design for culture of endothelial cell layers with improved perfusion conditions. Biofabrication 2015;7:15013-15013.
    2. Rennert K, Steinborn S, Gröger M, Ungerböck B, Jank A-M, Ehgartner J, Nietzsche S, et al. A microfluidically perfused three dimensional human liver model. Biomaterials 2015;71:119-131.
    3. Groger M, Rennert K, Giszas B, Weiss E, Dinger J, Funke H, Kiehntopf M, et al. Monocyte-induced recovery of inflammation-associated hepatocellular dysfunction in a biochip-based human liver model. Sci Rep 2016;6:21868.
    4. Raasch M, Rennert K, Jahn T, Gartner C, Schonfelder G, Huber O, Seiler AE, et al. An integrative microfluidically supported in vitro model of an endothelial barrier combined with cortical spheroids simulates effects of neuroinflammation in neocortex development. Biomicrofluidics 2016;10:044102.
    5. Press AT, Traeger A, Pietsch C, Mosig A, Wagner M, Clemens MG, Jbeily N, et al. Cell type-specific delivery of short interfering RNAs by dye-functionalised theranostic nanoparticles. Nat Commun 2014;5:5565.
    6. Englert C, Trutzschler AK, Raasch M, Bus T, Borchers P, Mosig AS, Traeger A, et al. Crossing the blood-brain barrier: Glutathione-conjugated poly(ethylene imine) for gene delivery. J Control Release 2016.
    7. Rinkenauer AC, Press AT, Raasch M, Pietsch C, Schweizer S, Schworer S, Rudolph KL, et al. Comparison of the uptake of methacrylate-based nanoparticles in static and dynamic in vitro systems as well as in vivo. J Control Release 2015;216:158-168.

  • Vacancies: 3