Snapshots

International audience at Photonic Nanomaterials Symposium 2014

From November 24 to 28, 2014, the Beutenberg Campus in Jena breathed the international spirit of nanooptics and nanostructured photonic materials. The members of the initiative “Photonic Nanomaterials – PhoNa” and the Abbe Center of Photonics (ACP) had invited a number of highly reputed experts from the field to an international topical symposium. As nanostructured materials hold the prospect of creating properties unfeasible from its natural constituents, the interest in applications and devices accessible by such materials is still tremendous. In particular, the ability to tailor the propagation characteristics of electromagnetic radiation at a wide range of frequencies has sparked research efforts all around the globe and numerous activities have been put in place.

Many leading experts in the field have contributed to the success of the symposium and the doctoral school by invited talks and lectures, among them Ari Sihvola (Aalto University), Thomas Philbin (University of Exeter), Philippe Lalanne (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Bordeaux), Sergei Tretyakov (Aalto University), Andrea Alù (University of Austin, Texas), Javier Aizpurua (Donostia International Physics Center, San Sebastian), Thomas F. Krauss (University of York). More than 80 participants, both from industrial R&D as well as from academia gathered to learn about the latest trends and developments in the field. The PhoNa symposium was collocated with a Doctoral School on Photonic Nanomaterials and Metamaterials organized by the Virtual Institute for Artificial Electromagnetic Materials and Metamaterials – METAMORPHOSE VI AISBL and the Abbe School of Photonics. In a long series of doctoral schools within this edition, the Jena School was attended by a record number of 45 international doctoral students.

The symposium and doctoral school were organized by Prof. Carsten Rockstuhl (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) and ACP Director Prof. Thomas Pertsch (source: PhoNa News).

In the summer 2009, the advanced research initiative PhoNa led by the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena succeeded in a highly competitive call of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research for excellence in research and innovation. As a result, a focused research program on photonic nanomaterials was established in 2010. This joint effort gathered together a number of leading German research institutions from the Max Planck Society, the Helmholtz Society, and the Fraunhofer Society and with partners from Germany’s photonics industry. The PhoNa consortium conducts research on a broad spectrum of linear and nonlinear photonic nanomaterials, as, e.g., metamaterials, photonic crystals, plasmonics, diffractive structures, and their application in fields such as biology, chemistry, and material sciences. PhoNa is one of the main strategic projects of the Abbe Center of Photonics. It is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research in the program “Spitzenforschung und Innovation in den Neuen Ländern” (support code, 03IS2101A) and by the Thuringian Ministry for Education, Science, and Culture in the ProExcellence program (source: PhoNa).

Detailed information about PhoNa can be found at:

http://www.phona.uni-jena.de/

(23.02.2015)

New rules for clinical trials conducted in the EU

Clinical trials are a vital step in the development of new and safe medicines and in improving medical treatment. Volunteers are enrolled in a clinical trial for the following reasons:

• to test the safety and effectiveness of new medicines,

• to test new indications for existing medicines or

• to compare two standard treatments.

Clinical trials are not only important for pharmaceutical companies or academic researchers. They are first and foremost highly crucial for patients, in particular those affected by serious or rare diseases, as they are often the only way for them to have access to the most advanced, life-saving treatments.

Clinical trials are mainly conducted by the pharmaceutical industry in order to generate data on the safety and efficacy of medicinal products they are developing. In addition, approximately 40% of clinical trials in the European Union (EU) are conducted by non-industry players, such as academics, foundations, hospitals, or research-networks (often referred to as “non-commercial sponsors”). Usually, they conduct clinical trials in order to improve and compare treatments with existing (authorized) medicines.

The conduction of clinical trials in the EU is tightly regulated. This is to uphold the rights and ensure the safety of clinical trial participants (referred to as “subjects” in the proposed regulation) and to ensure the reliability and robustness of the data generated. These rules are set out in the Clinical Trials Directive (2001/20/EC).

The 2001 Clinical Trials Directive has been criticized by patients, researchers and industry alike for its disproportionate regulatory requirements. High costs and a lack of harmonization of the applicable rules necessary for multinational clinical trials are a few examples of criticisms that have been made.

Taken together, these restrictions have contributed to a significant decline in the number of clinical trials in the EU – a reduction of about 25% in the last few years.

The new regulation aims at restoring the EU’s competitiveness in clinical research and the development of new and innovative treatments and medicines by cutting red tape and bringing back patient-oriented research to Europe.

The new regulation will make it easier to conduct multinational clinical trials, i.e., conducted in more than one member state, in the EU. Measures that cut red tape and simplify the current rules are:

• A straightforward authorization procedure allowing for a fast and thorough assessment of the application by all member states concerned and resulting in one single assessment outcome. The authorization procedure allows the individual EU countries to determine the roles of the bodies in charge of the assessment, on the condition that the assessment is fully independent and based on the necessary expertise.

• Simplified reporting procedures so that researchers no longer have to submit largely identical information on the clinical trial separately to various bodies and member states.

• A way for the commission to conduct controls in EU countries and third countries to make sure the rules are being properly supervised and enforced.

Finally, the new legislation will take the legal form of a Regulation. This will ensure that the rules for conducting clinical trials are identical throughout the EU. This is vital to ensure that member states, in authorizing and supervising the conduct of a clinical trial, have a common base of identical rules.

Ethics committees will be involved in the assessment of clinical trials application. However, as with the current situation, their responsibilities and detailed composition will be determined independently by each EU country. In this way the different traditions in the various member states are respected.

The concept of tacit agreement already exists in the current Clinical Trials Directive. The Regulation just extends its application to all assessors, to avoid bottlenecks and delays in the procedure. This is to alleviate an unnecessary and frustrating restriction that trial sponsors face under the current rules.

It is important however, to emphasize that member states will always have the possibility to stop any clinical trial which they consider could endanger the health of the participants.

The risk to subjects participating in clinical trials varies depending whether the trial is to test a new medicine or to compare existing medicines. The regulatory framework needs to be sufficiently flexible to respond to this. The Regulation, while continuing to uphold patient safety, takes better account of the actual risk to which subjects will be exposed during the clinical trial and adapts the regulatory burden in relation to the risk posed. It introduces the concept of a “low-intervention clinical trial” – one example being clinical trials that compare already authorized medicines. In such cases, the regulatory requirements will be simpler.

There is a trend towards increased clinical trials in areas with emerging economies such as Asia, South America and Russia. The Regulation will ensure that no matter where a clinical trial is being performed, the fundamental rules for the protection of subjects are applied. It therefore includes rules for clinical trials which are conducted outside the EU but are referred to in a clinical trial application within the EU. For such trials, the rules call for compliance with regulatory requirements at least equivalent to those in the EU, including rules on transparency.

Transparency on the conduct and results of clinical trials has several benefits, and the Regulation strengthens the rules accordingly. Transparency avoids redundancy and duplication. It ensures that even clinical trials with unfavorable results are made public, thereby avoiding “publication bias”. Finally, transparency gives patients the possibility to find out about on-going clinical trials in which they may wish to participate.

Clinical trials authorized in the EU since May 2011 are published in an official EU-register (https://www.clinicaltrialsregister.eu/).

Following the positive vote in Parliament, the Regulation now has to be formally adopted by the Council and published in the Official Journal. Its application is linked to the full functionality of the EU portal and database under development by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). It is expected to come into effect in mid-2016 at the earliest (source: European Commission).

Detailed information about the topic can be found at:

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-14-254_en.htm

and

http://www.ema.europa.eu/ema/index.jsp?curl=pages/news_and_events/news/2015/01/news_detail_002253.jsp&mid=WC0b01ac058004d5c1

(23.02.2015)

New Internet portal launched: Looking for partners for innovation

Are you excited about the prospect of collaborating with others in the field of R&D? But how do you go about finding a suitable partner?

It was precisely in order to reduce this hurdle that the project partners – the Berlin Chamber of Industry and Commerce (CCI), the Berlin Partner for Business and Technology, and the Berlin Chamber of Crafts and Skilled Trades – decided to establish the cooperation platform “marktreif.berlin – Business meets Research”. Contacts, information and services are provided in relation to the transfer of know-how and technology with the goal to build a network of Research institutions and companies to promote Berlin as a center of science and technology, and to create transparency.

The “marktreif.berlin” portal offers the user three different ways of making successful contacts and identifying network partners:

• Using keywords to make a targeted search.

• Posting one’s own cooperation request and being contacted by others.

• Making an intuitive search in innovation fields and finding partners for collaborative ventures and networks who might otherwise never have been found.

In addition to the project partners CCI Berlin, Berlin Partner for Business and Technology and Berlin Chamber of Crafts and Skilled Trades, the project “marktreif.berlin” is being backed by the Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Technology and Research. This department is responsible for promoting business in Berlin and supporting Berlin-based companies. Its tasks include supporting innovation and strengthening cooperation between companies and science institutes (source: marktreif.berlin).

Detailed information can be found at:

http://www.marktreif.berlin/en/

(23.02.2015)

Laser safety courses

Fundamental and very specific knowledge and skills are essential for the use of medical lasers. There are a number of laser courses available that satisfy the training concept of the German Society for Laser Medicine (DGLM) e.V. The following listed courses follow the guidelines of the DGLM:

Berlin, LMTB & Ev. Elisabeth Hospital: Laser medicine from A to Z/Lasermedizin von A bis Z

URL:http://www.lmtb.de/kurse/lasermedizin_ de.php

Berlin, LMTB: Lasers in Dentistry/Laser in der Zahnmedizin

URL:http://www.lmtb.de/kurse/zahnmedizin_ de.php

Ulm, ILM: Laser safety course ”Lasers in Medicine”/Sachkundekurs “Laser in der Medizin”

URL:http://www.ilm-ulm.de/home/kurse-und-fortbildung.html

The training concept of the DGLM proposes a two-stage training program. This usually comprise of:

• a 2-day basic course to convey general laser knowledge and the basics of medical application as well as a laser safety course,

• a 1-day course either in a specific subject area or general clinical laser application.

The chronological order and the time frame of the course are recommended but are by no means obligatory. Accreditation of the clinical courses by the DGLM requires recognition of the relevant state medical chambers. The point system is applicable.

For further information about the training concept of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Lasermedizin (DGLM) e.V. please visit:

http://www.dglm.org

(09.03.2015)

Nature’s Top 10 in 2014

Every year, the highly prestigious journal Nature names 10 scientists and engineers who have “made a difference”.

Recognized by Nature’s 10 in 2014 are:

• Radhika Nagpal, a Harvard computer scientist whose self-organizing swarm robotics are currently the state-of-the-art in collective artificial intelligence.

• Andrea Accomazzo, flight director of the Rosetta mission that landed the first spacecraft on a comet.

• Sjors Scheres, for his software that dramatically improves cryoelectron microscopy imaging.

• Pete Frates, for turning the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) Ice Bucket Challenge into the social-media phenomenon of the year, driving awareness and funding for the fight against ALS.

• Sheik Humarr Khan, a scientist on the team that performed the first genetic sequencing of the Ebola virus in the recent West African outbreak, and who remained dedicated to curbing the disease until his death on July 29, 2014.

• Masayo Takahashi, who led the first surgical transplant, derived from induced pluripotent stem cells; the retinal transplant could potentially treat age-related macular degeneration.

• Kopillil Radhakrishnan, head of the Indian Space Research Organization, who led India’s Mars mission and who personifies the nation’s huge space program ambitions.

• David Spergel, who identified problems with the discovery of gravitational waves that were reported to confirm the theory of cosmic inflation.

• Maryam Mirzakhani, the mathematician who became the first woman to win the prestigious Fields Medal since the prize’s inception in 1936, for her mathematical findings linking hyperbolic geometry and string theory, and finally,

• Suzanne Topalian, whose work has been crucial in bringing cancer immunotherapy from the lab to the clinic (source: Caroline Perry, Harvard SEAS).

For more information please also visit:

http://www.nature.com/news/365-days-nature-s-10-1.16562

(23.02.2015)

Winning by losing: School of Engineering scientists found a way to improve laser performance

Energy loss in optical systems, such as lasers, is a chief hindrance to their performance and efficiency and it occurs on an ongoing, frustrating basis.

To help laser systems overcome loss, operators often pump the system with an overabundance of photons, or light packets, to achieve optical gain. But now, scientists from the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, USA (WUSTL) have shown a new way to reverse or eliminate such loss by, ironically, adding loss to a laser system to actually reap energy gains. In other words, they have invented a way to win by losing.

In a series of three experiments, researchers led by Lan Yang, Das Family Career Development Associate Professor in Electrical & Systems Engineering at WUSTL, showed in a first experiment that they could change the coupling between two microresonators by changing their distance and introduce on-demand loss controllably to one of them.

Microlaser (© J. Zhu, B. Peng, S.K. Özdemir, L. Yang)

In a second experiment, by varying the loss, they manipulated the coupling regimes and estimated the intensity of light in the two resonators and surprisingly found an initial decrease in total intensity of the two resonators followed by an increase, and finally a rebirth of strong light intensity as the loss was increased.

In a third experiment, the researchers report achieving two nonlinear phenomena, the thermal effect and a Raman gain in silica despite increasing loss.

The experimental system that the researchers used consists of two tiny directly coupled silica microtoroid (doughnut-shaped) resonators, each coupled to a different fiber-taper coupler that aids in guiding light from a laser diode to photodetectors. The fiber is tapered in the middle so that light can between the fibers and the resonators. Yang has said the concept will work in any coupled physical system.

Loss is delivered to one of the microresonators by a tiny device, a chromium-coated silica nanotip, whose position within the evanescent field (leaked-out light) of one of the resonators was controlled by a nanopositioner that operates at a minuscule 20-nm resolution. Another nanopositioner controls the coupling strength between the resonators by tuning their distance.

The loss-gain phenomenon occurs near a feature called the exceptional point, which has a dramatic effect on a system’s properties. The exceptional point has contributed to a number of counterintuitive activities and results in recent physics studies.

Funding for this research was provided by the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), Army Research Office, U.S. Department of Energy, RIKEN iTHES Project, MURI Center for Dynamic Magneto-Optics, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Vienna Science and Technology Fund and the Austrian Science Fund (source: Tony Fitzpatrick, WUSTL).

The complete press release from the Washington University in St. Louis can be found at:

http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/27547.aspx

(23.02.2015)

See also the original article: Peng B, Özdemir SK, Rotter S, Yilmaz H, Liertzer M, Monifi F, Bender CM, Nori F, Yang L. Loss-induced suppression and revival of lasing. Science 2014;346(6207):328–32.

Disinfection using color and light

Every year in Germany between 800,000 and one million people are infected with hospital pathogens. According to the latest estimates from the German Society for Hospital Hygiene (DGKH), about 3000 to 4000 of these patients die from so-called “multi-resistant pathogens”. In the case of multi-resistant bacterial infections, even prescribing large quantities of antibiotics often proves to be of little or no help. A team of scientists at the University of Regensburg, headed by Prof. Wolfgang Bäumler, who is incidentally one of the members of the Editorial Board of Photonics & Lasers in Medicine, has now developed a process to significantly reduce the microbial contamination of people, food and animals.

Surfaces that are treated using this method even remain permanently sterile. This has enabled researchers to produce self-sterilizing material surfaces, such as for those used on light switches or medical devices.

Conventional disinfection treatments also help against bacterial pathogens. However, the added bonus of this new method is that it requires no skin-irritating chemicals but only a few specially developed dyes and light. The principle behind this method is called photodynamics. It exploits the property of certain dyes that when irradiated with light, part of the light energy is transferred to the surrounding oxygen and converted into so-called “singlet oxygen”.

Using this active oxidant, doctors will be able to target bacterial pathogens and possibly, in certain cases, to offer an alternative to the use of antibiotics as it is especially effective against multi-resistant pathogens. For example, if the nasal mucous membranes have to be cleared of bacteria, the use of disinfectants is not sufficiently effective. “Currently the antibiotic mupirocin is used which has already led to the development of resistant pathogen types”, explains the director of the Regensburger research team, Wolfgang Bäumler. “With photodynamics we can kill bacteria independent of their resistance and this will in turn aid the prevention of resistance development”, he adds.

The process is incredibly simple: most natural color molecules, such as vitamin dyes, when irradiated with light convert the surrounding atmospheric oxygen into its reactive variant, singlet oxygen. Depending on how fast the disinfection process should be, the researchers use either artificial visible light, such as light emitting diodes or neon light, or sunlight to act on the dye-loaded bacteria.

The Regensburg researchers’ vision for the future is to spray the entire body of a patient with a colorless, non-visible dye, and then to irradiate the patient with light in a light box to start the photodynamic process. A light box is already under construction. The Head of Dermatology at the University Hospital Regensburg, Prof. Mark Berneburg, sees the new method as a great opportunity. Tests have already been carried out on pig skin. “Reducing the bacterial load by a factor of a thousand or more shows how efficient the therapy can be”, says the dermatologist. Prof. Berneburg is hoping that the use of the dyes for humans will be approved very soon (source: Eckart Granitza, Berliner Zeitung).

The complete article (only in German) can be found at:

http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/wissen/photodynamik-gegen-multiresistente-keime-desinfizieren-mit-farbe-und-licht,10808894,29579284,item,1.html

(23.02.2015)

See also: Maisch T, Eichner A, Späth A, Gollmer A, König B, Regensburger J, Bäumler W. Fast and effective photodynamic inactivation of multiresistant bacteria by cationic riboflavin derivatives. PLoS One 2014;9(12):e111792.