BioBarriers 2021

BioBarriers is an international scientific event, organized every two years with constantly 200+ participants from all over the world. The event that we had planned as BioBarriers 2020 had to be cancelled due to the worldwide pandemic situation. The organizers decided to postpone and offer a virtual meeting in 2021. Now we are cordially inviting you to virtual BioBarriers 2021 – an online conference focused on drug delivery in the context of infection research. The interfaces of the outer epithelia (skin, GI, and lungs) as either target tissue or barrier for non-invasive drug delivery are the central topic and connect research on delivery technologies and complex in vitro models. Our target audience comprises early-stage researchers as well as expert scientists and professionals from academia and industry. The program combines international experts presenting their views and latest results with opportunities for contributed presentations or flash talks. Traditional sessions with invited and contributed talks are supplemented by an interactive session where participants can get in contact with each other and discuss with the experts. Participation is free but registration is mandatory! Please register here…

Program Chairs and Organizers of BioBarriers 2021

Claus-Michael Lehr isProfessor at Saarland University, and also cofounder and head of the department Drug Delivery at the recently established Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS). Together with his long lasting colleague Ulrich Schäfer, he developed the BioBarriers conference series and acts as program chair since its beginning in 1997. He received numerous awards and memberships and serves as expert reviewer for research institutions, international corporations and journals. Since 2015, Claus-Michael Lehr is listed yearly by the journal The Medicine Maker as one of the hundred most influential experts of drug development.

Gregor Fuhrmann is a Junior Professor at the Helmholtz-Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) and Saarland University. He studied Pharmacy in Berlin and received his doctoral degree in 2013 from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich. For his thesis, he was awarded the ETH Silver Medal. He then joined the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London as a German Academic Exchange Service Postdoc and a Marie-Curie Intra-European Fellow. Since December 2016, he is heading his research group Biogenic Nanotherapeutics (BION) which is dedicated to biomimetic engineering for improved therapy and imaging of infectious diseases. In September 2020 he was selected for an ERC Starting Grant.

Brigitta Loretz is a senior scientist at the Helmholtz-Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS). She studied Microbiology and received her PhD in 2007 from the Department of Pharmaceutical Technology, at the University of Innsbruck. Then she joined Prof. Lehr’s group at the Saarland University as postdoc in June 2007. Her scientific interest is on carriers for intracellular delivery of biopharmaceutics, in particular, nucleotides, for the use in treatment/prevention of infectious diseases, and the development of new excipients, e.g. of new biodegradable polymers for this purpose. Her studies include delivery systems for anti-infectives, antigens or immune modulators as well as cell- or tissue-based models for the design/investigation of (nano)carrier-enabled delivery via non-invasive routes.