Microrobots for drug transport

LOEWE Start Professorship: Anna C. Bakenecker receives two million euros

2024/10/29 by

Dr Anna C. Bakenecker has been awarded a LOEWE Start Professorship at TU Darmstadt. The expert in medical physics is working on the development, control and monitoring of nano- and microrobots that are designed to transport drugs to their target sites in the body. The LOEWE research funding programme of the state of Hesse is providing around two million euros over a period of six years.

Dr Anna C. Bakenecker, an expert in medical physics, has been awarded a LOEWE Starting Professorship at TU Darmstadt.

When taking medication, less than one percent of the active ingredient reaches the actual site of the disease. Often, for example in chemotherapy, the whole body is affected, which can cause serious side effects. Anna C. Bakenecker is researching how drugs can be targeted to their sites of action, where they will only have a localised effect. To this end, she is developing tiny micro- and nanorobots loaded with medication, which in the future can also be guided through the body – for example to a tumour, an area of inflammation, or a vasoconstriction.

Bakenecker uses biomaterials that enable triggered drug release and guides the micro- and nanorobots with magnetic fields. In addition to guidance, precise tracking of the tiny robots is essential for safe use in patients. To this end, the medical physics expert and her team are researching a new type of tomographic imaging modality: magnetic particle imaging. This field of research has great potential for nanomedicine, as it allows regions of the body that are difficult to access to be reached, and drugs to be targeted to their sites of action.

‘The associated progress for patients cannot be overestimated,’ said Hessian Minister of Science Timon Gremmels. ‘I am very pleased that we have succeeded in bringing Dr Bakenecker to Hesse with the LOEWE funding, thereby further expanding our still young focus area in medical physics.’

Great asset for TU Darmstadt and RMU

Professor Dr. Tanja Brühl, President of TU Darmstadt
Professor Dr. Tanja Brühl, President of TU Darmstadt

TU President Tanja Brühl emphasises the importance of the new professorship for research at TU Darmstadt and in the Rhine-Main University (RMU) network. “I am delighted that we have been able to appoint Anna C. Bakenecker to a LOEWE Start Professorship at TU Darmstadt. This makes her the third of a total of three dedicated medical technology professorships that form the core of the research cooperation and the Biomedical Engineering degree programme in the Rhine-Main University Alliance,” said Brühl. “With her research focus on micro- and nanorobotics in conjunction with magnetic particle imaging and hyperthermia for non-invasive cancer therapy, she is an excellent fit for the research and teaching profile of biomedical engineering. But she will also be a great asset to TU Darmstadt beyond medical technology. With her innovative research, she will be able to set trends in many areas of electrical engineering and will be an enrichment for the Cluster of Excellence project CoM2Life.”

Anna C. Bakenecker's LOEWE Starting Professorship will run for six years from 1 January 2025 and will be based in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (etit) at TU Darmstadt. This also makes it the first LOEWE professorship for the etit department.

LOEWE professorships at the TU

LOEWE Start Professorships are aimed at excellent researchers at an early stage of their careers, who are recruited or kept in Hesse as a centre of scientific research, with funding of up to two million euros for a period of six years. Other funding lines are LOEWE Top Professorships, through which excellent, internationally recognised researchers can receive between 1.5 and 3 million euros for five years to endow their professorship, and LOEWE Transfer Professorships. These are currently in the pilot phase and support researchers in further developing application-oriented results in dialogue with partners from industry and business. The funding amounts to up to one million euros to endow a professorship for five years.

About the person

Dr Anna C. Bakenecker studied physics in Münster and Heidelberg and received her doctorate from the University of Lübeck in 2021. She then moved to the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia in Barcelona as a postdoctoral researcher. Since June 2023, she has been Group Leader ‘Magnetic Methods’ at the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Individualised and Cell-based Medical Engineering (IMTE) in Lübeck. Her W2 professorship with tenure track at TU Darmstadt starts on 1 December 2024.

Cluster of Excellence project "CoM2Life"

Com2Life is one of the projects with which TU and its partner universities currently apply for the Cluster of Excellence funding line by German federal and state governments. TU Darmstadt is represented in the Excellence Strategy competition with a total of three project outlines. In addition to “CoM2Life” on communicating biomaterials, these are “Reasonable Artificial Intelligence” (RAI) on artificial intelligence and “The Adaptive Mind” (TAM) from the field of cognitive sciences.

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