Confocal High-Content-Screening-Microscope

• Subject Area: Medicine
• Term: Funded in 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 544657535

The Department of Pharmacy at the LMU Munich launched a very successful imaging facility in 2013, offering access to state-of-the-art of fluorescence based techniques to participating scientists. The whole range from imaging of subcellular structures to whole animals is covered by the facility. In recent years so called High-Content-Screening (HCS), the high throughput screening of compounds based on increasingly complex imaging has evolved as integrative part of compound testing and drug development. Recent appointments at the Department of Pharmacy (Pharmaceutical Technology, Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Biology) have considerably increased the need for this technology, which is not yet available at the Department, and which calls for completion of the respective equipment. Lab-on-a-chip approaches and three dimensional cell culture systems (spheroids, tumoroids, and organoids) inevitably gain importance in drug development – also with respect to the reduction of in vivo experiments. Therefore, a High-Content-Screening microscope is needed with a high working distance, high penetration depth, high scanning speed, and the option to generate optical sections at high resolution. The systems currently used in the imaging facility (line scanning microscopes) do not warrant the necessary speed. Thus, a spinning disc based system dedicated to High-Content-Screening applications is required to enable this core technology for future drug development research at the Department of Pharmacy. In this course we will also integrate hardware- and software-capabilities to enable automated image analysis using AI-based systems. In addition to the application in research projects, the aspect of training future scientists for this upcoming technology in life sciences is of paramount significance for the Department of Pharmacy.

• DFG Programme: Major Research Instrumentation
• Major Instrumentation: Konfokales High-Content-Screening-Mikroskop
• Instrumentation Group: 5042 Mikroskope für Hochdurchsatz und Screening
• Applicant Institution: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
• Leader: Professor Dr. Stefan Zahler