Guest Professor PD Dr. Antonina Lavrentieva (Course 790031)

The latest strategies for the production of in vitro 3D cell cultures will be presented in the course of the lectures. A particular focus of the lecture is on materials such as hydrogels. 3D constructs of higher complexity like different types of gradient hydrogels and their applications will be presented. Another important cell culture parameter, the dissolved oxygen concentration, will be discussed and the application and importance of hypoxia in 2D and 3D cell culture systems will be presented. Another focus of the lecture series is cell analysis in 3D cell cultures - here different cell types modified with genetically encoded hypoxia biosensors and different two- and three-dimensional culture systems will be presented and evaluated. These hypoxia reporter cells are the first of their kind to be described in the literature and enable the spatio-temporal detection of oxygen supply limitations in various in vitro systems.
PD Dr. Antonina Lavrentieva studied biology at Moscow State University and defended a doctoral thesis in physiology. Furthermore, she studied Life Sciences at Leibniz University Hannover. In her second doctoral thesis she investigated methods for expanding mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in bioreactors and the influence of hypoxia on the MSCs.
She is a group leader at the Institute for Technical Chemistry at Leibniz Universität Hannover and works in the field of stem cell research, 3D cell culture and tissue engineering. In 2022 she received the venia legendi in Chemical Engineering. Her current research interests include optimization of stem cell media, 3D cell culture, implementation of genetically encoded sensors to characterize 3D cell cultures, gradient hydrogels, and 3D bioprinting. She is currently Chairwoman of the Advisory Board of the DECHEMA specialist group “Medical Biotechnology”.