Metabolic Imaging & Tissue engineering Group News

Prof. Ruslan Dmitriev and PhD candidate Angela Debruyne collaborated with TU Graz (Prof. S. Borisov) and University of Tubingen on the design of new type of the nanothermometer, based on organic Zr complexes and exhibiting long emission decay times. These materials open a new framework for microsecond-range emitting temperature-sensitive materials, providing better resolution and potential applications in imaging temperature gradients in multicellular spheroids, as we have demonstrated in the study. The research has been published in Advanced Optical Materials journal. Russegger A, Debruyne AC, Berrio DC, Fuchs S, Marzi J, Schenke-Layland K, Dmitriev RI, Borisov SM: Bright and Photostable TADF-Emitting Zirconium(IV) Pyridinedipyrrolide Complexes: Efficient Dyes for Decay Time-Based Temperature Sensing and Imaging . Advanced Optical Materials 2023,:2202720. If you are interested in our research in nanothermometry, expertise and dedicated nanosensors, do not hesitate to contact us. ...

Are you looking for a PhD and interested in advanced live cell microscopies? Perhaps in FLIM? In some of the best labs across EU and UK? With funded mobility? We have good news for you: within the Horizon-funded MSCA doctoral network we are hiring 12+2 PhD students. More information here . Apply via EURAXESS / FLIMagin3D website or for UK here  Twitter 

It was a busy period during June-October this year! Below are some important updates about our team: - Together with prof. Sarah Vergult, we received a funding by the Special Research Fund (BOF) to start an interdisciplinary research project on imaging of neural organoids 'IMAGIBRAINDD' . The team will grow with at least one new PhD student. More details to follow. - Have you ever heard about FLIMagin 3 D ? Together with Prof. Michael Monaghan (Trinity College Dublin) and a number of experts across EU and UK we have secured funding for a new doctoral training network (MSCA) aiming at expanding & consolidating training in biosensors, modelling, tissue models, hardware and software for 3D FLIM. This project will start from 1-Jan-2023 and soon we will be hiring PhD students. Twitter page for new updates. - New microscope(!) Thanks to FWO (medium infrastructure call 2021) and support from ~ 25 other enthusiastic colleagues from UGent and VIB, soon we will have confocal white ...

Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials Research Group @UGent in May 2022:  From left to right: W. Vandenberghe, M. Meul, J. Aernoudt, R. Dmitriev, I. Okkelman and A. Debruyne

Our lab has published a new protocol paper, this time with the video, in the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE)! In this research method paper, we report the use of red/ near-infrared emitting biocompatible nanosensors to monitor oxygenation of the live multicellular spheroids (made of one or more cell types), together with the tracers of cell death. While this methodology is typically available only for users with 'high-end' PLIM microscopes and alike, we show that using of ratiometric readout with the red and near infrared emitting fluorescent nanosensors makes this possible on broadly available 'widefield' fluorescence microscope platforms. This method helps comparing oxygenation of spheroids, assessing this in a long-term and kinetic assays, comparing their variability and viability, essential in follow-up 3D printing applications. This is the first article in our collection ' Quantitative live cell imaging of 3D models' , guest-edited together with ...

 We are proud to organise a symposium at TERMIS-EU 2022 conference in Krakow, Poland! More information on TERMIS can be found here: https://eu2022.termis.org/call-for-abstracts/

Our team contributed to the database summarising features of multicellular spheroids, produced from cancer and non-transformed cells.  3D spheroid cell cultures often suffer from incomplete reporting, lab-to-lab variability and other factors, which can affect reproducibility of research. The multidisciplinary team led by Prof. Olivier De Wever (LECR, CRIG) performed analysis of factors affecting spheroid reproducibility - among the others, spheroid formation method and growth medium composition and glucose content were found to be among the most important. The work published in Nature Methods journal can be assessed here . The  News and Views  feature. Feel free to use the database ! https://www.mispheroid.org