Cells in deep freeze and crystal-clear
2026/06/30
A success for biomedical research at TU Darmstadt: Professor Thomas Burg has been awarded a prestigious ‘Proof of Concept’ grant from the European Research Council (ERC). With funding of 150,000 euros, his team will investigate the innovative potential of a novel microscopy technology over the next 18 months. The ‘cryo-iLM’ project could provide new insights into the complex interior of cells and significantly improve medical diagnostics.
At the heart of the project ‘Cryo-iLM: A High-NA Cryoimmersion Microscopy Platform for Nanometre Imaging’ is the development of new technologies to investigate the structure of cells and pathological changes after flash-freezing with high resolution using state-of-the-art light microscopy. What makes this project unique is that it brings together a wide range of disciplines – from microscopy and microsystems technology to cryogenic engineering.
The key benefit is that, through ultra-rapid freezing, cells are exceptionally well preserved, and rapidly occurring processes are frozen in a fraction of a second. This allows them to be examined in minute detail. For a long time, however, the challenge has been that the performance of modern optical microscopes is severely limited under cryogenic conditions. In the “MICROCRYO” project, which is also funded by the ERC, Burg and his team have overcome this problem. Their technology greatly elevates the image quality, revealing features that would otherwise remain invisible. “Cryo-iLM” builds on this to assess the market viability as well as the commercial and societal potential of the research concept.
New paths in disease research
The planned platform will, for the first time, enable the use of high-performance immersion optics at temperatures as low as minus 140 degrees. Similar to viewing through an underwater camera, direct contact via a refractive-index-matched – i.e. optically perfectly tuned – medium compensates for irregularities, eliminates distortions and enables a dramatic improvement in image quality. “At such low temperatures, entirely new opportunities open up in light microscopy because the samples remain stable for a very long time, making even extremely weak signals visible,” explains Dr Niko Faul, who is researching the new technology together with Burg.
The potential areas of application are vast. In the future, for example, it will be possible to observe more precisely how active substances can be transported more effectively into cells, why blood cells lose their flexibility in certain diseases, and how changes in the cell nucleus lead to abnormalities. “We expect our project results to contribute to gaining new insights into the structural and molecular foundations of dynamic processes in cells,” emphasizes Burg. “Understanding these relationships is a crucial step towards gaining a better understanding of the causes of many diseases and developing effective therapies.”
About the researcher
Professor Thomas Burg has been conducting research at TU Darmstadt since 2018. Prior to this, he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Burg has already been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant. At TU Darmstadt, he heads the Integrated Micro-Nano-Systems group within the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (etit). He is strengthening the focus on synthetic biology within TU Darmstadt’s Matter and Materials (M+M) research field.
‘Proof of Concept’ Grant
A ‘Proof of Concept’ Grant is a funding scheme that complements the research grants awarded by the European Research Council (ERC). It is aimed exclusively at researchers who already hold an ERC grant and wish to exploit a research result from their ongoing or completed project on a pre-commercial basis. This is the first step towards technology transfer. The aim of a proof-of-concept project is to assess the market potential of such an idea. The ERC therefore does not fund research activities in this context, but rather measures aimed at further development with a view to achieving application readiness, commercialisation or the marketing of the idea.
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