Laboratories

The group „Scientific Coordination and Support“ is centered around provision and development of cell lines and animal models for optoacoustic imaging. Our portfolio includes transgenic cancer cell lines stably expressing iRPF720 and tyrosinase (both labels provide good contrast in optoacoustic imaging), systems for retroviral gene transfer and various chemical labels for primary cells. This allows us to mark primary cells and cell lines upon request. Besides we do ectopic and orthotropic tumor implantations to visualize tumor vasculature and monitor certain hallmarks of cancer. These models are used also to perform clinically relevant treatment studies and execute immunotherapy-based experiments using primary T-cells and macrophages.

To advance the field of optoacoustics to a new era we have developed Cre/LoxP based mouse reporter lines that will enable us to perform lineage tracing and cell tracking experiments. Finally it will provide a tool to visualize mouse anatomy and physiology with unprecedented resolution and distinctness.