EU funding for projects in biotechnology, medicine, and physics

Six ERC Consolidator Grants awarded to TUM researchers

For many seriously ill people, artificial organs offer great hope. Unfortunately, however, the supply of nutrients to the cells within these organs is usually inadequate because, unlike in natural organs, the network of blood vessels does not learn how to adapt and develop optimally. In the “Learning Matters!” project, Prof. Karen Alim therefore wants to gain a fundamental understanding of how matter learns and then teach this to artificial blood vessels, among other things. To do this, she is relying on the amazing abilities of slime molds. These single-celled organisms are known for solving complex problems even without a brain, such as finding the shortest path through a maze. Prof. Alim's vision is to usher in an era of adaptive matter – matter that literally feels and learns from its past.

Physicist Karen Alim is Professor of Biological Physics and Morphogenesis at the TUM School of Natural Sciences as well as a Member of the ORIGINS Cluster of Excellence. Her research was already funded with an ERC Starting Grant in 2020.

The SYNAPSE-ON-CANCER project led by Prof. Ekin Demir is based on his team’s very recent groundbreaking discovery: pancreatic cancer hijacks nervous system signals to drive its growth via “pseudo-synapses”. Tumor cells receive the neurotransmitter glutamate via these pseudosynapses. This triggers various growth-promoting processes. Demir now wants to investigate how exactly nerve cells invade the tumor, how the pseudosynapses develop, and what exactly happens at the molecular level. He hypothesizes that complex neuron-cancer “networks” develop in the tumors. In addition to gaining a better understanding of the mechanism, Demir also wants to use these findings to develop therapeutic strategies. He is employing bioinformatic tools to identify approved drugs that could be repurposed to block the signals transtmitted over the pseudosynapses.

Ekin Demir is a member of the TUM School of Medicine and Health and the Vice Chair of the Department of Surgery at TUM University Hospital. He was appointed to the Else Kröner Clinician Scientist Professorship in ‘Translational Pancreatic Surgery’ in 2021.

Antibodies are essential for both diagnostics and therapy because they bind to pathogens, neutralize them, and tag them for immune cells to clear. However, producing them is expensive, time-consuming, and typically dependent on animal-based methods. With the EngToTarget project, Stefan Guldin aims to create an alternative to biologically derived antibodies: tailored nanostructures that could be used, for instance, in rapid diagnostic tests. The approach is based on a concept of nanoscale self-organization, in which simple molecular building blocks can be directed to form highly selective, multivalent structures. This architecture enables them to bind to desired molecules — including pathogens. Until now, the concept has been mainly theoretical; Stefan Guldin now aims to put it into practice by developing nanoparticles that target influenza and COVID viruses as well as cholera bacteria for direct use in diagnostics. The open-source process the team aims to realize is designed to combine the advantages of automated methods, robotics, and machine learning. 

Stefan Guldin became Professor of Complex Soft Matter at the TUM School of Life Sciences in 2024. He is the scientific co-director of the Proteins4Singapore project.

When proteins fail to function properly, this can cause serious problems in living organisms. To prevent such errors, cells rely on systems that ensure proteins are built accurately. In her project QUALItRNA, Prof. Danny Nedialkova studies how cells maintain the integrity of transfer RNAs (tRNAs) – the molecules that bring amino acids to ribosomes, where proteins are made. The project will examine what happens when this protective system breaks down, and how the resulting errors affect normal cell development. Using advanced sequencing technologies and human stem-cell models, QUALItRNA will explore biological changes that contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders linked to tRNA dysfunction, such as intellectual disability. The long-term goal is to identify where this process becomes vulnerable, opening the door to future therapeutic approaches.

Danny Nedialkova is Professor for Biochemistry of Gene Expression at the TUM School of Natural Sciences and a Max Planck Research Group Leader. Her research was already funded with an ERC Starting Grant in 2018.

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) is a fundamental method in chemistry, biology and medicine, but its potential is strongly limited by its well-known poor sensitivity. In NMR-NANOTUBES, Dr. Roberto Rizzato combines quantum technology and nanomaterials to overcome this limitation. He develops boron nitride nanotubes hosting optically active spin qubits, an absolute novelty in today’s quantum technologies. These tubes are so small that many of them can enter a single living cell, enabling spatially resolved NMR measurements at the subcellular level for the first time. The project also explores their use as a room temperature hyperpolarization platform to amplify NMR signals for biomedical applications. This approach opens the way to compact, easy to use devices that could one day operate directly in clinical settings, greatly increasing the accessibility of advanced NMR methods.

Dr. Roberto Rizzato is a physical chemist and researcher at the Professorship of Quantum Sensing at the TUM School of Natural Sciences.

According to current knowledge, around 25 percent of the universe consists of dark matter. Several experiments worldwide are currently attempting to detect the mysterious particles of dark matter.
One of these experiments, DAMA/LIBRA, claims to have detected dark matter. However, this has not yet been confirmed by independent experiments. With the PIRATES project, Karoline Schäffner and her team want to verify the controversial results. To do this, they are using the same detector material as the original, but are working with significantly more sensitive superconducting quantum sensors – which are to be continuously developed and improved. Their goal is to make production of these sensors reliable and scalable, enabling the production of large sensor arrays in the future. In addition, the group will test novel crystalline materials that could significantly increase the sensitivity of future detectors and thus overcome previous limitations.

Karoline Schäffner is Professor of Experimental Dark Matter and Neutrinos at the TUM School of Natural Sciences and leads a research group on dark matter at the Max Planck Institute for Physics.  She was recently honored in the Max Planck Society's Lise Meitner Excellence Program. Prof. Schäffner is also a principal investigator in the ORIGINS Cluster of Excellence.