CHAIR OF MEDICAL

SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY

Pharmacokinetics is the science of studying the rate and extent of absorption, distribution, metabolism and elimination of chemicals or drugs in the body using experimental techniques and mathematical modeling approaches. Pharmacokinetic parameters describing these processes include volume of distribution, clearance, half-life, maximum concentration, area under the concentration curve and bioavailability. These parameters can be determined or estimated using mathematical models that simulate the pharmacokinetic process.

Advantages of pharmacokinetic models include their great extrapolation power (i.e., across doses, routes, and species) and the ability to predict target tissue dosimetry, which is important for nanomedicine applications. By comparing model simulations and experimental data, we gain insights into the species-, size-, dose-, route-, and surface chemistry-dependence in the pharmacokinetics of nanoparticles (Fig.1).

Fig. 1: Mechanisms of nanoparticle transport and uptake in target organs

In our work we challenge the problem that CT based on conventional x-ray absorption imaging, however, lacks functional information on the molecular level. Therefore it is quite interesting to develop new high-resolution techniques for functional CT.
One promising approach is to use functionalized gold nanoparticles conjugated to bio-molecules for which it has already been shown that specific tumor imaging can, at least in principle, be achieved using conventional CT, although at a concentration and radiation dose far too high for clinical imaging.

Our approach on the other hand is based on the detection of x-ray fluorescence emission of these functionalized gold nanoparticles. This enables the detection of a concentration of the gold nanoparticle based tracer down to the nanomolar range. The pharmacokinetic modeling of the Au-nanoparticle distribution in the compartments of the body is a necessary prerequisite for the simulation of the image formation.

• We offer topics for bachelor and master thesis projects for students of various engineering disciplines (e.g. biosystems engineering, molecular biosystems, medical systems engineering, engineering cybernetics etc.). If you are interested, please contact us by e-mail and provide the following information: short CV, transcript of academic records, areas of interest and desired starting date.