Half-annual consortium meeting of the nanoControl project in Münster

Today, the partners of the nanoControl project financially supported by the ZIM program (Zentrales Innovationsprogramm Mittelstand) of the Federal Ministry for Economy and Energy (BMWi) met in Münster for the half annual consortium meeting, to discuss the results obtained so far, and the plans for the next six months. We welcomed our former postdoc Stephan Kolkenbrock and his colleagues, Petra Herzog, Silke Retzlaff, Marie-Therese Breuer, and Sabina Arndt from altona Diagnostics GmbH in Hamburg, who presented their results on using chitosan nanoformulations loaded with nucleic acids as full process controls for in vitro diagnostics. On our side, our postdocs Sruthi Sreekumar, who is responsible for managing our side of the project, and Ratna Singh, who is performing the in silico modelling of the chitosan-nucleic acid interactions, were supported by our project technician Elisabeth Seiband. Together, we discussed the problems encountered during the past few months relating to significant losses of nucleic acids in different steps of our current protocol. Possible reasons were identified and experiments were planned to verify those, and of course, potential solutions were also already discussed. Given the extremely smooth progress of the project up to this point, we felt it was about time for the first problems to occur - otherwise, where is the fun?