Healthcare industry

Prof. Christoph Cremer Cremer hopes to use the Vertico-SMI nanoscope to decipher the molecular secrets of cells. After the 4Pi microscopy this system is the second development of his scientific career to break through the barrier of optical microscopy.

Prof. Dr. Dr. Christoph Cremer of the Kirchhoff Institute of Physics at the University of Heidelberg and his team have developed a high-performance microscope. This cutting edge microscope enables scientists to investigate molecular details of several cells simultaneously using standard fluorescent dyes such as green fluorescent protein (GFP). The world’s fastest nano light microscope uses a new localisation microscope method known as spectral…

Article - 08/12/2014

Stefan Hell – a Nobel Prize for a lateral thinker

Stefan Hell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of STED fluorescence microscopy which has made it possible to obtain optical images well below the optical diffraction limit. However, Hell does not really see himself as a developer. His passion is scientific principles, the identification of how things are connected and the exploration of new, uncharted paths.

Press release - 08/01/2009

ILM - Microscopy

There are many different light microscopy methods for dealing with biological and medical issues on the cellular level. In many cases, this also involves the use of lasers either for the manipulation of cells or for the laser-assisted microscopic investigation of cells. A number of different confocal laser microscopy methods have proved to be particularly successful in such investigations to the extent that they have become virtually…

Press release - 10/03/2011

Novel High-Resolution Methods in Fluorescence Microscopy

Heidelberg scientists have developed a new method by which the physical limits in high-resolution light microscopy can be overcome with the aid of chemical reactions. The scientists replaced light-dependent processes by chemical reactions for light-independent switching of fluorescent probes to mark cellular structures for high-resolution optical microscopy. This method opens up new application vistas for fluorescence microscopy.

Press release - 08/01/2009

ILM - Microscopy

A collaborative project funded by the Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg foundation, investigated the extent to which spectrally resolved Raman microscopy is able to represent specific enzymes in living cells without the use of markers.

Article - 29/10/2012

Tilman Schäffer: Biology and medicine – from the point of view of physics

Tilman Schäffer at the University of Tübingen creates a bridge between physics, biology and medicine. His speciality is innovative microscopic detection methods such as atomic force microscopy. In addition to application, Schäffer is working on improving scanning probe microscopy instrumentation and methods.

Article - 04/03/2009

New modern microscopy centre brings together different disciplines

Microscopy service imaging support and method development these are the three major pillars of the Bioimaging Center BIC at the University of Constance that was inaugurated in October 2008.

Scientists use super-resolution microscopy to study previously undiscovered cellular worlds, revealing nanometer-scale details inside cells. This method revolutionized light microscopy and earned its inventors the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In an international collaboration, AI researchers from Tübingen have now developed an algorithm that significantly accelerates this technology.

A pioneering technique developed by the Prevedel Group at EMBL allows neuroscientists to observe live neurons deep inside the brain – or any other cell hidden within an opaque tissue. The technique is based on two state-of-the-art microscopy methods, three-photon microscopy and adaptive optics. The paper reporting on this advancement was published on 30th September 2021 in Nature Methods.

Article - 02/03/2015

EU supports biophysicists from Ulm to elucidate the structure of chromatin

Human DNA consists of three billion base pairs, which corresponds to a total length of approximately two metres. DNA must be compressed 200,000-fold in order to fit into the tiny nuclei of mammalian cells. The thread-like complex of DNA and proteins is called chromatin. Although chromatin has been widely studied, relatively little is yet known about the spatial and temporal organisation of chromatin in interphase cells.

Press release - 01/11/2008

Boris Mizaikoff and Christine Kranz – on the way to systems analytics

The two chemists Boris Mizaikoff and Christine Kranz have a great deal in common they are married to each other they have children together and they work at the same university on projects that combine technologies and methods to create multifunctional analytical platforms at the Department of Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry at Ulm University.

Dossier - 02/06/2014

Bioanalysis – techniques for the characterization of biological material

Science constantly provides researchers with new challenges biologists and bioanalysts have to deal with and which come from sources as varied as the ever increasing number of resistant pathogenic bacterial strains or the famine conditions in Third-World countries. In the search for scientific truths bioanalysis is the development optimization and application of the entire range of analytical methods available. However we need to keep in mind…

A new high-performance microscopy system funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) will be in operation at the Institute of Zoology at the University of Heidelberg. The biologist Prof. Dr. Jochen Wittbrodt and his team will use the system to investigate central development stages in animals, in particular embryonic development processes that lead to the formation of a complete fish.

Press release - 31/01/2017

Background Suppression for Super-resolution Light Microscopy

Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have developed a new fluorescence microscopy method: STEDD (Stimulation Emission Double Depletion) nanoscopy produces images of highest resolution with suppressed background. The new method yields an enhanced image quality, which is advantageous when analyzing three-dimensional, densely arranged subcellular structures. STEDD, a further development of the STED method, is now presented in…

In the Centre of Applied Photonics CAP at the University of Constance interdisciplinary teams of researchers are working on new optical technologies with a special focus on laser technology.

Press release - 08/07/2010

EMBL: Digital Embryo gains wings

The scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, who ‘fathered’ the Digital Embryo have now given it wings, creating the Fly Digital Embryo. In work published today in Nature Methods, they were able to capture fruit fly development on film, and were the first to clearly record how a zebrafish’s eyes and midbrain are formed. The improved technique will also help to shed light on processes and organisms,…

Press release - 02/04/2011

Less stress for cells, more enjoyment for researchers

A new microscopy centre for biomedical research at the Institute of Laser Technologies in Medicine and Metrology at the University of Ulm (ILM) was officially opened with a symposium featuring high-calibre personalities from science and medicine.

Press release - 23/12/2009

Zeiss to look to the future following a slump in the fiscal year 2008/2009

In the fiscal year 2008/2009 (ended 30th September), the Carl Zeiss Group clearly felt the impact of the global economic crisis, particularly in its industrial business. In contrast, results from the company’s Medical Systems, Microscopy and Consumer Optics/Optronics Groups were more positive. These figures were presented at the company’s Annual Press Conference in Stuttgart.

Researchers from Freiburg and Harvard publish the three-dimensional structure of the B cell antigen receptor, shedding new light on its composition.

Prof. Dr. Harald Krug a toxicologist who runs the Materials-Biology Interaction division at Empa - Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research in St. Gallen Switzerland and his team are investigating the interactions of synthetic materials with biological systems. The team of 25 researchers is focusing in particular on the effect of particles and nanomaterials such as CNT on human and animal cells. The division has been an…

Scientists from the EMBL and the German Cancer Research Center have presented a new method for generating metabolic profiles of individual cells. The method, which combines fluorescence microscopy and a specific form of mass spectroscopy, can analyze over a hundred metabolites and lipids from more than a thousand individual cells per hour. Researchers expect the method to better answer a variety of biomedical questions in the future.

Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the University Clinic Heidelberg, Germany, have produced a three-dimensional reconstruction of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), which shows the structure of the immature form of the virus at unprecedented detail. Immature HIV is a precursor of the infectious virus, which can cause AIDS. The study, published in the 22-26 June online edition of PNAS, describes how the protein…

Researchers have created a tool that maps how breast cancer grows in previously unseen detail, and highlights how the cells around the tumour may be the key to controlling the spread of disease. The new technology can trace which populations of breast cancer cells are responsible for the spread of the disease, and for the first time highlights how the location of cancer cells could be as important as mutations in tumor growth The new study is…

Dossier - 28/04/2014

Data mining: new opportunities for medicine and public health

Research and healthcare activities produce huge quantities of data that need to be presented in an understandable structure. This requires computer-assisted extraction of relevant data and the use of statistical methods. This process, known as data mining, enables the discovery of patterns in large data sets. Data mining methods are of particular importance in fields that use high-throughput methods, visualisation methods and telemedical…