Responsive wound dressing
PROF. DR. CHRISTOPH KLEBER & PROF. DR. WOLFGANG KNOLL
With the establishment of its research focus "Smart Materials and Digital Technologies", the DPU Krems has created a unique selling point at the Krems location, as well as regionally and nationally. The aim of the work is to develop a wide variety of sensors for improving diagnostics and patient care. This creates long-term development prospects for the Technopol Krems, which can also lead to the establishment of new companies at the site.
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Wounds, especially burn wounds, are frequently infected with bacteria, e.g., Pseudomonas aeruginosa or Staphylococcus aureus. In addition, a considerable number of infections in hospitals are postoperative infections. In all cases, bacterial infections lead to delayed healing and pose a risk for invasive infections and sepsis.
In order to avoid frequent and often unnecessary dressing changes and thus reduce the risk of infection, knowledge of the status of the wound is essential!
In bacterial infections, cytolytic toxins, e.g. -toxins, and enzymes, e.g. proteases, hyaluronidases and ureases, are secreted.
The concept of a smart wound dressing loaded with functional units that can monitor the infection status of the wound and trigger the release of therapeutic agents (some elements of this figure courtesy of Toby Jenkins, University of Bath).
For this purpose, the wound dressing is equipped with fluorophore-loaded polymeric nanocontainers (polymersomes), which release their self-quenched charge after lysis by a bacterial virulence factor, causing the wound dressing to glow. We propose to use the phenol-soluble modulins (PSMs), e.g., PSM3 or -toxin, secreted by S. aureus, or the toxin rhamnolipid of P. aeruginosa as a chemical stimulus that triggers vesicle lysis, leading to a visual diagnostic response of the smart wound dressing.
In addition, a second population of polymersomes loaded with antimicrobial peptides (synthetic AMPs such as V4 or naturally occurring host defense peptides, HDPs) is immobilized within the dressing to trigger a therapeutic effect in-situ, i.e. within the wound dressing
SUPPORTED BY
These chemical markers can be used to develop wound dressings with integrated functional systems that can
- indicate the condition of the wound in a
diagnostic test and can
- can trigger a therapeutic response.
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.