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When and why in the body is the biological decision made between health and disease? What criteria are responsible for the fact that identical therapies are successful in different ways in various patients? In order to clarify the relevant physiological processes, analytical methods are needed that simultaneously capture information from different classes of molecules such as proteins, lipids and metabolites (metabolic products). The technological basis for achieving this is provided by 4D analytics. It describes the quantitative and qualitative analysis of biological systems and the time- and spatially-resolved detection of (bio-)molecules. With 4D analytics, researchers at ISAS aim to determine the quantities and types of different substances, such as proteins or lipids, as well as their location simultaneously within a sample at different points in time. To achieve this, in the three research programmes the scientists combine their results and methodological developments in an interdisciplinary way in order to obtain the maximum amount of information from each sample.
»Four-dimensional « analytical methods for precision medicineVierdimensionale
This means: In the case of cardiovascular diseases, autoimmune diseases or cancer, for example, the researchers not only want to use mass spectrometry to understand what is happening at the level of proteins, lipids or
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metabolites, but also to use various microscopy methods to determine, for example, where exactly the various molecules have accumulated in a single cell and to what extent. In order to be able to evaluate the new types of data obtained in the simultaneous analysis procedures, scientists at ISAS are working on strategies and programmes using artificial intelligence.
In the long term, »four-dimensional« analysis methods for precision medicine developed at ISAS should enable medical staff to diagnose diseases as early as possible and in a targeted manner. They should also support them in selecting the most suitable measures for prevention or therapy (with the least side effects) for each individual.