The Future of Medicine

Even today, many people die because they do not receive a donor organ. An evil that we must accept? Questions like these will be discussed in the Leonardo module “Future of Medicine: Medical Technology and Tissue Engineering”. With this, students from all faculties will gain insights into current researched technologies to tackle the addressed problem. The course will focus on selected areas of medical technology and in particular explain research activities on tissue engineering, the artificial production of biological tissue. In this process, cells are taken from an organism, from which functional tissue units are grown with the aid of (artificial) scaffold structures. This requires complex printing and weaving technologies as well as in-depth knowledge of bio-interfaces and the generation of materials and suitable contact (surface) areas. Subsequently, the harvested cells can be returned to the organism. Here, innovative imaging techniques help to localize the tissue-engineered systems, observe their remodeling and installation and verify their functionality. Intensive research is being conducted on this topic not only in medicine, but also in engineering and life sciences to enable personalized medicine. In addition, the module provides insight into possible contributions of automation technology and robot-assisted regeneration. Furthermore, there are ethical issues to consider, particularly in medical research: What is justifiable? This dimension will also be discussed in the lecture.

Students can either prepare a thematic focus in small groups in consultation with the respective lecturer (student co-presentation) or the thematic focus of one lecture can be elaborated on (protocol or clarification/exact classification of controversial issues). In addition, there is the possibility to write a term paper on a topic.