Research
Septic shock
Sepsis and septic shock are one of the main causes of death worldwide and their treatment remains a medical challenge. The LZM is working on the extracorporeal purification of infected blood; unfortunately, the systems currently in clinical use are too ineffective. Endotoxins (the main cause of septic shock) are to be specifically removed from the blood. The new adsorption-based technologies enable rapid and cost-effective blood purification using nanostructured, plant-based carbon materials. Initial results are extremely encouraging.
Decontamination
In order to protect an untouched environment on distant worlds as well as on Earth during their investigation, it is essential that all penetrating equipment is first sterilised from microbial infections. As pre-sterilisation only achieves unsatisfactory results, the LZM is developing a process that is only used shortly before entering the untouched habitat and thus excludes subsequent contamination. In this way, for example, threats to existing subglacial ecosystems on Earth can be ruled out for the first time during their exploration and the path of probe development for the exploration of alien planets can be demonstrated.
Viroid disease
Viroids are parasitic RNA molecules and damage many crops - often with serious economic consequences. Until now, there has been no way of curing or at least cleaning up affected plants; the plants are doomed to destruction. A highly innovative process is therefore being developed to combat viroid infections in plants, which utilises the biophysical properties of the viroids.
BacHarvester
The device is designed to enable fast, efficient and reproducible sample collection for microbiological screening. The technology has the potential to set a new standard in the analysis of microbial contamination, both in space research and in the biomedical and food industries.
Microbiological contamination control is of immense importance in industry and research, especially in space research. The strict guidelines of the "Planetary Protection" law apply, although its specifications are still based on methods that were established in the 19th century and have not been significantly improved since then. (E.G: ESA standard protocol "Microbial examination of flight hardware and cleanrooms", ECSS-Q-ST-70-55, is based on manual cotton swab manipulations). Such procedures are inaccurate, time-consuming and user-dependent. There is an urgent need to develop better sampling and analysis methods that meet modern standards of efficiency, reproducibility and precision.