ESR 15

Name: Anders Ørts Tjell

Host Organisation: Institute of Analytical Chemistry and Food Chemistry, Graz University of Technology

Project Title: Optical sensor concepts for monitoring metabolic activity

The objective is to investigate new optical sensor concepts for lactate, potassium and reactive oxygen species (ROS) and transfer to Organ-on-Chips devices. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) will be the targeted analyte for ROS due to its relevant lifetime.
The new sensors will complement sensors for oxygen, pH and glucose and enable the analysis of the metabolic activity of biological models on the exposure of drugs and nanomaterials. The main working tasks are:

  1. To investigate new microfluidic biosensor concepts based on enzymatic conversion of the target analytes including preparation of sensor components (dyes, polymers and particles)
  2. to integrate sensors and immobilize enzymes into organ on chip devices, and optimize sensors for relevant concentrations of analytes
  3. to establish multi-parametric monitoring and control of cell viability of micro-biological models
  • UPM – The Biofore Company, Finland, for 2 months
  • Fraunhofer – IGB, Germany for 2 months
  • University Hospital Jena, Germany for 2 months

Anders educated from Aalborg University, Denmark, in 2015 with a Cand. Scient. in chemistry. His master’s work was about non-covalently bound cyclodextrins in alginate hydrogels and contained mainly material chemistry.

From 2016 to 2019 Anders has been working at the Technical University of Denmark with development of optical hydrogen peroxide sensors. This project featured among other things organic synthesis and polymer chemistry and -physics. This position also introduced Anders to optical sensors, which lead to his current position at TU Graz, where the goal is to develop optical sensors for organs-on-a-chip systems.

Roses are red

Violets are blue

Science would be pretty cool if I knew how to

Black pepper is black

Smelling it makes me cough

Science would be pretty cool if I knew how to stuff