New Leica Bioimaging Center for applied cell research opens in Munich

Leica Microsystems and the Biomedical Center (BMC) of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich, Germany, will inaugurate the new core facility Bioimaging. Leica Microsystems will use the facility as reference and demo center. The reference center for state-of-the-art light microscopy at the BMC is the result of a strategic co-operation between Leica Microsystems and the LMU. The Leica Bioimaging Center provides the opportunity for a close cooperation between microscope developers and users to develop innovations in modern light microscopy and establish their application in applied cell research.

The Light-Sheet-Microscope Leica TCS SP8 DLS offers the possibility to gently examine big, living samples and visualize them in 3D – the example shows the eye of a fruit fly. Specimen courtesy of Nadja Dinges, Roignant Lab, IMB Mainz.

For the researchers of the BMC, the Leica Bioimaging Center offers access to the latest technologies in light microscopy, enabling them to make the smallest structures of the cell visible, even at the nanoscale, and investigate biological processes on molecular level. Among these technologies are the super-resolution STED (Stimulated Emission Depletion) microscopy, which was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2014, and Light-Sheet Microscopy, especially suited for big, living samples. The Leica Bioimaging Center is the biggest reference and demo center to be established by Leica Microsystems in Europe, so far. Customers and potential customers can discover the latest Leica systems here, see them used in research on site, and exchange experiences with the users at the facility. In addition, new products can be tested thoroughly by the users of the core facility before being introduced to the market. The facility will be operated by the Walter-Brendel-Centre of Experimental Medicine, one of the eight resident professorships at the BMC.

"To us, the strategic partnership with the BMC - a high level, interdisciplinary research center - offers excellent possibilities to work closely together with the users of our microscopes. This will enable us to understand the requirements of our customers even better and to focus on the development of innovations which will help science to further decipher the secrets of life and win the fight against currently terminal illnesses," says Markus Lusser, President of Leica Microsystems. "We are happy to be able to work together with the researchers of the BMC on developing the Bioimaging Center into a high-level light microscopy facility for cell research."

"In many aspects, biomedical research is a very abstract field of research, as the scientists can often investigate the molecular connections only indirectly," says Professor Peter Becker, Chair of Molecular Biology and Executive Director of the Biomedical Center (BMC). "Therefore, high resolution microscopy techniques are highly important, as they make the cell structures visible and offer the opportunity to review and visualize the ideas."

"We are happy about the close cooperation with Leica Microsystems," comments Dr Steffen Dietzel, Manager of the Core Facility Bioimaging. "It gives us the chance to provide our users with microscopes which permanently meet the highest requirements in terms of configuration and maintenance."

Comprising 60 research groups, the BMC, which was opened on the HighTechCampus of the LMU in October 2015, is one of the biggest research centers in Germany to be established within the last years. As a "Center for Applied Cell Research", the BMC is closing the gap between basic research and clinical applications. At the Leica Bioimaging Center, 10 microscope systems of the latest generation are at the disposal of the researchers - among them a 3D super-resolution system Leica TCS SP8 STED 3X with integrated light sheet module, two Leica TCS SP8 MP multiphoton systems, two Leica TCS SP8 confocal microscopes and one high-end widefield microscope Leica DMi8 for live cell research.