Immanuel Sanka

The research infrastructure on experimental studies and applications of cellular processes aims at gathering national know-how in the field of cell and molecular biology, and aims at setting up an instrumental capability to develop competence and services in the fields of microbial and mammalian cell processes and their applications. The infrastructure will be built up jointly by the University of Tartu, Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn University, Estonian University of Life Sciences and the Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics. The vision is to become a know-how and service centre to partner health, biotechnology and environment-focused public sector organisations, medical institutions, biotechnology and pharmacological companies. The focus will be on acquiring and setting up relevant instrumental complexes, development and offering of services, popularisation and dissemination of the field in order to ensure sustainability of researchers and future activities.

New or reoccurring bacterial threats are a major challenge of this century, and a delayed response due to the lack of field-testing options risks human lives and causing an epidemic. Classical microbiology techniques are relatively slow, while cytometric methods allow the measurement of cell count, morphology etc. in an easy, reliable, and fast way. State of the art flow cytometers are high-throughput benchtop instruments that are neither portable nor cheap enough for field testing, causing logistic delays in bacterial testing in remote areas and conflict zones or where infrastructure is limited. The goal of this R&D activity is to create the proof of concept of and develop the methodology for low-cost, fully portable flow cytometers based on droplet microfluidics, which will not only allow field analysis of bacteria, but will have a single-cell resolution. Furthermore, through cognitive electronics, the system will be easy to use and fully automated from sample input to result output.