Gräfelfing (Germany), June, 29th 2005

TILL Photonics−coordinated Biophotonics Network " Live Cell Screening " awarded 2.5 Mio € from BMBF

Following its second call for proposals on "Biophotonics networks" the BMBF selected the TILL Photonics GmbH lead "Live Cell Screening" project from 116 applications. This network started activities on June 1 st 2005. It couples leading technology enterprises from opto-electronics and electro mechanics (TILL Photonics GmbH, attocube Systems AG and ibidi GmbH) with a Biotech company (ProCorde GmbH) and three academic institutions (ZAB University of Freiburg, LfB University Hospital Münster and BioImaging Zentrum LMU Munich).

While in past 10 years the amount of capital investment by the pharmaceutical industry in screening for candidate substances has increased dramatically, the number of officially approved drugs has consistently fallen. In the light of this it is no surprise that strategies are changing. High content screening systems based predominantly on binding studies are been replaced by new high resolution methods. The extracted information is more valuable as the effect of the screened substance is observed in a native cell environment i.e. in living cells. In addition a single measurement documents multiple parameters. Thus, this approach supplies a much more vivo-relevant and complete picture than a simple and blind determining of binding constants.

The network will develop concepts for a completely novel screening platform, the effectiveness of which will be tested with example applications from the pharmaceutical industry and basic research. The aim of the developed concept is the observation of multiple cellular parameters in a single measurement. In addition an increase in the sensitivity and selectivity of the measurements is planned.

However, more "High Content" should not be achieved at the cost of "High Throughput". The network aims to achieve the same throughput with a multiple parameter platform as existing single parameter platforms can muster.