Research

Proteins are powerful medicines and industrial tools, but to be used as such, they require a correctly folded structure. During large-scale production, many proteins misfold and aggregate into inactive forms, dramatically increasing costs and limiting their use in biotechnology and medicine. Nature solves this problem with molecular chaperones—specialized helpers that stabilize proteins and guide them back into their functional shapes. This project aims to develop artificial, reusable versions of such chaperones using nanotechnology. We will study core–shell nanoparticles with a magnetic core and a soft outer shell composed of zwitterionic polymers—materials that strongly bind water and interact gently with proteins. Binding to these polymer shells will be designed to prevent protein aggregation and promote correct folding. By systematically tuning polymer length, density, and chemistry, the project seeks to identify the key design rules that determine whether proteins remain stable, misfold, or can be rescued once aggregated. A unique feature of the approach is the magnetic nanoparticle core. It allows artificial chaperones to be recovered and reused and enables localized heating via alternating magnetic fields. This controlled nanoscale heating is expected to help break apart amyloid-like protein aggregates, while the polymer shell simultaneously stabilizes the released proteins and promotes correct refolding. Using well-defined model, but medically and industrially relevant, proteins, the project combines physical chemistry, nanomaterials synthesis, and biophysics to establish quantitative links between protein–nanoparticle interactions and functional outcomes. If successful, this work could reduce the cost of protein manufacturing, improve the stability of protein drugs, and inspire new strategies to counter harmful protein aggregation in biotechnology and biomedical contexts.

HoloPlating is a new method for the rapid, automated, and accurate determination of microbial viability on agar plates — the universal gold standard for colony-forming-unit (CFU) enumeration across food safety, pharmaceuticals, clinical diagnostics, water monitoring, and biotechnology R&D. A new optical method will be developed for reading CFUs from agar plates at an early stage, which could achieve time-to-result improvements of 5–10× over the best current automated plate readers and 50–100× over standard manual protocols.

This project aims to provide water suppliers and other stakeholders involved in drinking water supply, such as the Red Cross and the Austrian Armed Forces, with a tool for the early detection of microbial pathogens and associated recommendations for action. Experimental technology and prototypes will first be validated in the laboratory and then tested in field trials with users in the second half of the project. The aim is to validate the potential performance of the holographic microscopy method in conjunction with machine learning in the relevant environment of the users—water suppliers and emergency services. The project partners will initially focus on detecting previously known microbial threats. Additionally, the potential of Holloid's technology to detect previously unknown microbial pathogens will be assessed.