Our research group aims to develop and apply high-throughput and high-content mechanical cell assays for the field of cardiovascular diseases focusing on the humoral and cellular immune response after tissue injury. While cell mechanical characterization has long been established as a sensitive biomarker, current approaches lack the throughput required for widespread fundamental and translational applications in biology, medicine and pharmacology.

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Real-Time Deformability Cytometry (RT-DC), which has recently been introduced, addresses this need by allowing for cell mechanical assays with on-the-fly analysis rates greater than 1,000 cells per second (Otto, 2015). With our research we plan to extend the capabilities of RT-DC towards tissue and cell dynamics bridging an understanding between molecular phenomena, mechanical properties and biological function.