Thomas Orasch

I studied pharmacy at the University of Innsbruck and did my Diploma Thesis on the synthesis of novel breast cancer therapeutics. Then, I switched to the Medical University of Innsbruck to the group of Hubertus Haas and did my PhD in molecular biology on developing a diagnostic test for invasive aspergillosis (IA) and the identification of novel drug targets in Aspergillus fumigatus. After that, I joined the group of Axel Brakhage at the Leibniz-HKI in Jena as PostDoc and worked on the interaction of A. fumigatus with macrophages and drug delivery systems against IA. Since June 2023, I’m heading the ATHANA consortium at the HKI dealing with nanoparticles as carriers for antifungal drugs.

Abstract Submission:

My presentation is about the delivery of hydrophobic compounds (drugs or fluorescent dyes) into 5 pathogenic fungi using nanoparticles (NPs). Thereby, we investigated the interaction of NPs with fungi, the uptake mechanism of encapsulated substances, and compared the efficacy of the uptake of substances (encapsulated in NPs vs. pristine drug).