Welcome to the team, Astrid and Mai!
We are looking forward to two new colleagues for our research and laboratory team!
Since the beginning of this year, Dr. Astrid Enkelmann and Dr. Mai Hoang have been supporting us in the areas of research and development. We would like to briefly introduce the two to our customers, partners, and all interested parties:
Expertise for the abolition of animal testing
ASTRID studied biology at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and successfully completed her studies in 2007 with a diploma. She completed her PhD at the University Hospital Jena (UKJ) in the Molecular Biology Laboratory of Urology and continued her research work as a research assistant in the Biomaterials Laboratory of the ENT Clinic at the UKJ. There she was part of a team for five years that carries out tests on newly developed materials for cytotoxicity (harmful influence on cells).
Since 2018, she has been a research associate in the Animal Welfare Unit of the UKJ. Together with other researchers, she continues to develop and supervise the CIRS-LAS (Critical Incident Reporting System in Laboratory Animal Science) project. This aims to identify opportunities for improvement for more transparency in laboratory animal science and to build up a database for incidents in laboratory animal science.
``I am delighted to be able to support Dynamic42! I will dedicate my practical work mainly to the further development of the Dynamic42 liver sinusoid model. Through my work at the Animal Welfare Unit, I also deal with current issues relating to the gradual improvement, reduction and abolition of animal experiments. That's why I would like to contribute my expertise to review regulatory requirements and develop validation plans for our models.``
- Astrid Enkelmann, Senior Scientist
Advances in lung infection research
After completing her biology studies in Vietnam, MAI received a scholarship for a master’s degree in biotechnology in South Korea. During this time, her research interest in so-called filamentous fungi (Aspergillus fumigatus) grew, which can cause serious diseases in people with weakened immune systems.
With this interest in mind, she began a PhD at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology of the Hans Knöll Institute (HKI) in Jena. During her PhD, she investigated the interaction of fungi with human immune cells. The Dynamic42 lung model was used, on which she and her team established an invasive fungal infection. Equipped with important research findings, Mai will support our team in the development of our lung and lung infection models in the Dynamic42 BioChip.
``I came to Dynamic42 because I strongly believe that organ-on-chip models will contribute to better science in the future. They provide researchers with a physiologically relevant, standardized tool to answer their scientific questions. This will help to make this world to a better place.``
- Mai Hoang, Senior Scientist.
More news from Dynamic42:
Blog, Disease-Modeling, Gut-on-Chip, Infection-Modeling
When butyrate drops, the gut loses more than a metabolite – it loses resilience
In this new study by Manuel Allwang, Maximilian Wipplinger, and Parastoo Akbarimoghaddam and colleagues, published in Small, the authors show why that loss may be especially important when inflamed tissue is challenged by the opportunistic fungus Candida albicans.
Read MoreBlog, Drug Development, Liver-on-Chip
Evaluation of a liver-chip model for clearance prediction
In this new publication led by scientists at Novartis and the University of Tübingen, the authors take a deep, engineering level look at the performance of a microphysiological liver on chip model for predicting human hepatic clearance, a central parameter in preclinical drug development.
Read MoreBlog, Gut-on-Chip, Infection-Modeling
Modeling Clostridioides difficile toxin pathogenesis and antiserum protection
In this new study from Jena University Hospital and the Paul-Ehrlich-Institute, the authors show that how we model Clostridioides difficile toxin exposure fundamentally shapes our ability to understand epithelial damage, immune activation, and therapeutic protection.
Read More