“3D-printed bioreactors for DNA amplification: application to companion diagnostics” accepted for publication in Sensors and Actuators B (available online: 21 April 2020)

Prof. Electra Gizeli from IMBB-Biosensors lab is recipient and will coordinate a new Human Frontier and Science Program (HFSP) grant entitled “Self-organization and biomechanical properties of the endosomal membrane”. HFSP Research Grants are highly prestigious and competitive research programs awarded to interdisciplinary international teams. This year, 20 Research Grants were selected for funding from an initial total of 549 letters of intent.

Nikoletta Naoumi, PhD student with our lab, is an invited speaker at the 8th Annual Diagnostics Innovation Summit, Developing Rapid Tests and Liquid Biopsies, 19-21 May 2020, Lisbon, Portugal.

Position: “Development of integrated system of plant pathogens field detection”

Biosensors lab is the recipient of and will coordinate a new FET-OPEN grant entitled “Towards an instrument-free future for molecular diagnostics at the point-of-care (Acronym: Free@POC). The program involves the development of a novel diagnostic tool for genetic amplification and detection at ambient temperature, combined with smartphone operation. The consortium includes, in addition to FORTH, Pasteur Institute (France), Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection (Italy), Gnosis Data Analysis (Greece) and University College London Hospital (UK) as partners.

Α multidisciplinary group led by members of Βiosensors Lab (Prof.Electra Gizeli, Dr. Giorgos Papadakis and Dr. Alexandros Pantazis), Plant Molecular Biology Lab (Prof. Kriton Kalantidis) and the Experimental General Lyceum of Heraklion (Prof. Haris Dimitrakopoulos) received the First Award for their development of a portable Lab Box to detect genetically modified plants (see photos here and here).

The proposal was distinguished for its:

1) Scientific and educational excellence focusing on advanced technologies and biological issues of importance to the society
2) Innovative nature employing state of the art methodologies
3) Global application to molecular diagnostics

The concept is illustrated in a short video by Dr Pantazis.

Patras Science Park “Proof-of-Concept” grant is awarded to Dr G. Papadakis and Prof. E. Gizeli in order to bring innovation developed within Biosenors’ Lab to a commercialization stage. The grant concerns the development of a digital colorimetric DNA analysis method for the real-time and quantitative detection of nucleic acids in unprocessed human, plant and food samples. The platform which is portable and operates via a smartphone, has the potential to impact healthcare and agro/food safety.

Prof. Electra Gizeli delivered an invited talk at the Rapid Analysis Diagnistics2018 conference in Amsterdam. The invitation concerned her group’s work on the development of a rapid Lab-on-Chip platform for foodborne pathogens detection. This work has been carried out within the EU funded project LoveFood2Market and in collaboration with five more partners.

Prof Electra Gizeli was invited to present her group’s work at the 1st International Conference of Nanotechnology and Bionanoscience that took place in Heraklion, Crete

PhD student Tassos Samarentsis received highly competitive studentship from the State Scholarships Foundation (Ίδρυμα Κρατικών Υποτροφιών – ΙΚΥ) for his proposal on “Development of a combined Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) and Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) systerm for biophysical studies and clinical analysis”

Organisation of 1-day workshop “Industrial needs regarding foodborne pathogens testing and potential role of emerging technologies” at IMBB-FORTH. The workshop was organised as part of the EU-funded project LoveFood2Market.

Biosensors Lab represents IMBB in Thessaloniki International Fair 2018 and presents its work on research and innovation

Prof. E. Gizeli has been appointed Deputy Director of Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology

Congratulations to Gesthimani Theodosi, MSc student of the “Molecular Biology and Biomedicine” program, for being awarded one of the two “Maria Michail Manassaki” studentships offered to the Dept. of Biology graduates. The award is given to students with excellent performance in their undergraduate and graduate studies.

Prof. Electra Gizeli delivers a Plenary Lecture at the 10th International Conference of Instrumental Methods of Analysis (IMA)-2017, Heraklion, Greece, on “Acoustic Sensors for molecular diagnostics and point-of-care”

Dr. Dimitra Milioni is awarded the “IKY Fellowships of Excellence for Postgraduate Studies in Greece – Siemens Programme”.

Prof. Electra Gizeli is invited to give a talk on ” Acoustic waves for biosensing and moleculatr diagnostics” at  the 2-day meeting on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at Interfaces organized at the Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, Israel

Our brand new website has just been launched. Readers are welcome to read about our research activities, get acquainted with our group members and search our publications database.

The highly prestigious FET-OPEN grant was awarded by the European Commission to the project “CATCH-U-DNA”, submitted by 7 partners with Prof. E. Gizeli as the coordinator. The work proposes a radically new and highly ambitious plan to develop a platform that could replace the PCR amplification method with an ultrasensitive detection scheme based on the use of ultrasound hydrodynamics. The method will be validated during the detection of common mutations found in colorectal and lung cancer.

Dr Dimitra Milioni and Biosensors lab are awarded a collaboration grant from the French Ministry of National Education, Higher Education and Research for collaboration with Laboratoire des BioMolécules at UPMC-Paris 6.

Prof Electra Gizeli is elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

LoveFood FP7-funded project coordinated by E. Gizeli, gets recognition by EU council and is included in the list of “Examples that make us proud” produced by the Council of European Research and Innovation Ministers.

Our group is one of the winners in NOKIA Open Innovation Challenge 2015 competition.

Award of EC funding (Total 3.2M€/Biosensors Lab 809K€) within ICT-28-2015 “Cross cutting ICT Key Enabling Technologies”, to follow up LOVE-FOOD project and deliver a commercial product in the next 3 years (project: LoveFood2Market; coordinator: Prof. E. Gizeli).

Award of EC funding (Total 2.3M€/Biosensors Lab 450K€) for 3 years within ICT-28-2015 “Cross cutting ICT Key Enabling Technologies”, to develop a fast, direct, real time and inexpensive instrument for the acoustic detection of circulating tumor DNA related to colorectal cancer (LiqBiopSens).

Prof. Electra Gizeli is the Keynote speaker at the SAW Symposium 2014, Vienna.

Inside cover page of article published by George Papadakis and Electra Gizeli in Analytical Methods (2014, 6 (2) 363-371).

E. Gizeli organises workshop on “Acoustic Sensors in Analytical and Biophysical Studies”, Heraklion, Crete, IMBB-FORTH (29-30/08/2013)

Press-release following article by Papadakis et al., Scientific Reports, 2013, 3:2033, on GenomeWeb.com: “Researchers pair acoustic measurements with PCR for label free SNP genotyping-gene expression assay”

Our group is shortlisted in the 10 finalists of “Greece Innovates” competition.

HFSP selects to present our work on Bios. Bioel. 25 (2009) in the hot-off-the-press news.

Articles by Tsortos et al. and Saitakis et al. in Biophys. J. (2008) reported by Biotech Business Week (NewsRx, p. 796, 16/6/2008 and 08/01/2009, respectively)

Article by Tsortos et al, Biophys. J. 94(7), 2706–2715 (2008), is discussed by Jonathan Ellis and Michael Thompson in HFSP journal, 2(4), 171-177 (2008).